Events

The MIT Climate Clock is back! The project took shape in 2020 in an MIT D-Lab class and has been evolving ever since.

The clock projects scientifically accurate information on the top of the south face of the MIT "Green" Building, the tallest building in Cambridge and home to the MIT the Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences.

The MIT Climate Clock features the following information:

Goal: To limit global temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F) which is the target embraced in the COP21 Paris Agreement of 2015. The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, is a legally binding international treaty on climate change to "limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels"

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Budget: a very large number from which one derives the actual time of the climate clock. The "Carbon Dioxide Emissions Budget" represents how much carbon dioxide the world as a whole can release into the atmosphere to maintain at least a 66% chance of avoiding global average temperature increases of 1.5°C (2.7°F).

Deadline: Credible current projections suggest we have about seven years left at current emission rates. The "Deadline" is another way of expressing the carbon dioxide emissions budget. It's the time we have left to take decisive action to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F).

Lifeline: Representing the percentage of the world's energy that is currently provided through renewable sources.

Led by MIT D-Lab Lecturer Susan Murcott, the  MIT Climate Clock team, formed in 2020, is the effort of a diverse team of MIT D-Lab students, faculty and alumni, along with additional students from Harvard, who recognize the urgency of the climate emergency and want to spark awareness and action.

The team believes that the 2021 projections of the MIT Climate Clock on the Green Building, the tallest building in Cambridge, may have been the first university climate clock in the world. Their vision is that “all K-12 schools and higher education institutions in the U.S. and around the world enact their own  Climate Clocks, becoming a beacon inspiring reflection and action, protecting our planet and all life.”

Concurrent projection April 22 at Harvard's Lehman Hall.

MIT projections to continue nightly, dusk to dawn, through May 28.

See Boston Globe 4/24/21