New Major in Climate System Science and Engineering by Chris Peterson SM '13

Exactly one year ago today, Jebby blogged about declaring Course 6-4: Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making, which the MIT faculty had just authorized at the April 2022 meeting. Two days ago, at the April meeting this year the MIT faculty authorized another new interdisciplinary major — jointly offered between Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) — called Course 1-12: Climate System Science and Engineering.

According to its website:

Climate change is the most pressing global challenge of our time. Solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change require an understanding of both the Earth system and engineering applications—as well as an understanding of human and institutional behavior.

Many of the best jobs held by leaders in the field, will combine scientific understanding of the earth’s systems with engineering skills. The Course 1-12 Climate System Science and Engineering degree program, jointly offered by the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), prepares students to become leaders, helping to accelerate high-impact, science-based solutions to aid the global response to climate change.

As industries and governments increase resources devoted to tackling the world’s most difficult problem, an expanding set of exciting career opportunities are emerging in climate science and engineering and this trend will likely continue over the coming decades.

You will learn:

* The foundational science of climate change
* Engineering to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate impacts of a changing climate
* How to model and analyze complex climate and environmental phenomena
* How to analyze large and diverse datasets to produce reliable predictions
* How to quantify the societal impact of climate risk and influence policy solutions for mitigation and adaptation

In a 3Q series from MIT News, the faculty heads of CEE and EAPS discuss why they wanted to create this joint major and how MIT is well-positioned to offer something like this, which you can go read over on the News site. Given the substantial interest from our prospective and admitted students —  and also everyone else at MIT who wants to be able to grow old in a liveable world —  in this topic, I wanted to make a quick blog post letting everyone know about this exciting new development.