Lorenz Center

The Lorenz Center at MIT is devoted to learning how climate works. Named after the late MIT meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz, a pioneer of chaos theory, the Center fosters creative approaches to increasing fundamental understanding.

Understanding and predicting global climate change may be one of the most complex scientific challenges faced today. MIT’s School of Science recently launched the Lorenz Center, a new climate think tank devoted to fundamental inquiry. By emphasizing curiosity-driven research, the Center fosters creative approaches to learning how climate works.

Kerry A. Emanuel, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Meteorology, and Daniel H. Rothman, Professor of Geophysics, are leading this effort, which is named after their late colleague Edward N. Lorenz, the founder of modern chaos theory and an early contributor to theoretical climate science.

MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) is providing the initial home for the Lorenz Center, and we expect close interactions with all of its programs. However, as with other interdisciplinary labs and programs at MIT (e.g., Computational and Systems Biology), the Lorenz Center is not part of a department. Students working in or with the Lorenz Center will obtain degrees in their home departments, under the direction of faculty advisors affiliated with the Lorenz Center. Administratively, we expect that the Lorenz Center will be an entity within MIT’s School of Science.

Within the first few years the Lorenz Center would like to support about a half-dozen postdocs, and soon after a similar number of graduate students. Added to this it expects a steady flux of visiting scientists, about two at any particular time.

The essential “deliverable” of the Center is the scientific knowledge arising from fundamental discovery. A second but no less important outcome will be a change in the culture of climate science. As the Center's success becomes known, the focus on fundamentals will not only produce a new cadre of young scientists focused on basic climate science, but also a demand for their skills at universities and government labs throughout the world.