Scientists believe that global warming will lead to more intense rainfall around the world, but models have been at odds about the rate at which it will affect extreme precipitation in tropical regions. A new study by atmospheric science professor Paul O’Gorman uses observations and computer simulations to estimate that with each one-degree Celsius climb in temperature there will be 10 percent heavier rainfall extremes in the tropics. This “suggests a relatively high sensitivity of tropical precipitation extremes to global warming,” O’Gorman told the MIT News.

Explore Professor O’Gorman’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.