The World Meteorological Organization’s Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award for 2013 will be presented to Yi Ming *03 and two other researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) at Princeton’s Forrestal Campus for their paper linking changes in monsoon rainfall to human activities.

“Anthropogenic aerosols and the weakening of the South Asian Summer Monsoon” was published in Science magazine in September 2011. The article concludes that decreasing rainfall during the South Asian summer monsoons over the past 50-plus years is a result of human influences. This change has been brought about by aerosols-tiny particles emitted by the burning of fossil fuels-and not by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. Their findings were obtained through the use of the latest NOAA/GFDL global climate model, comparing model simulations with observed monsoon rainfall data and hydrological cycle theory.

The award will be presented to the team of researchers in the spring of 2013 at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva. The organization is the United Nation’s agency for weather, climate and water.

Yi Ming holds a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering received from Princeton in 2003, along with a certificate in science and environmental policy from the Woodrow Wilson School. He has a B.E. in chemical engineering and a second in environmental engineering, both earned at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in 1998.