Dr. Massimo Bollasina, a former PhD candidate advised by AOSC and ESSIC Professor Dr. Sumant Nigam, has received the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award for 2013.
Bollasina of Princeton University, along with Drs. Yi Ming and Venkatachalam Ramaswamy of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), received the prestigious award from their paper that examined the prominent role of human-made aerosols in shaping regional climate change over South Asia, according the a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) press release.
The paper entitled “Anthropogenic aerosols and the weakening of the South Asian Summer Monsoon” was published in Science in October 2011.
According to the press release, “The paper noted that observations show that South Asia underwent a widespread summertime drying trend during the second half of the 20th century, but it was unclear whether this trend was due to natural variations or human activities. The authors used a series of climate model experiments to investigate the South Asian monsoon response to natural and anthropogenic forcings. They found that the observed precipitation decrease can be attributed mainly to human-influenced aerosol emissions.”
Ramaswamy said in an email that Bollasina’s skills gained while at UMD greatly contriubuted to the success of the paper.
“A good part of this work is owed to expertise gathered by Massimo’s doctoral research on the Indian monsoon performed at UMD with Sumant. This is a feather in Massimo’s cap – hope he gets more.” he said. “This is also kudos to WCRP’s research activities in modeling and long-term observations.”
