Read the full list of awardees on Neukom's website.
Outstanding Graduate Research in Computational Science:
Flora Perlmutter (Ecology, Evolution, Environment, and Society) Advisor: Justin Mankin
The Role of Sea Surface Temperatures in Regional Precipitation Variability and Trends
Robust regional precipitation projections are critical for planning and decision-making around water availability under climate change. A key source of uncertainty in precipitation projections is the pattern of oceanic warming. In this research, we create a library of the responses of river basin precipitation to sea surface temperature (SST) at every ocean grid cell using a linear regression model. We build a novel reconstruction of SST-forced precipitation that reveals SST forcing has significantly contributed to anomalies and trends in river basin precipitation. This understanding can be used to provide a foundation for constraining precipitation projections.