Dr. Shingirai Nangombe Won the WMO Professor Mariolopoulos Trust Fund Award for 2020

Recently, Dr. Shingirai Nangombe who graduated from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences has been awarded the "WMO Professor Mariolopoulos Trust Fund Award for 2020”. Dr. Shingirai Nangombe received this honor for his paper published in Nature Climate Change in 2018 which is entitled “Record-breaking climate extremes in Africa under stabilized 1.5 °C and 2°C global warming scenarios”. The award is split between two researchers. Another winner is Dr. Francesco S. R. Pausata for his paper “Greening of the Sahara suppressed ENSO activity during the mid-Holocene” published in Nature Communications in 2017. The awards will be presented next year during a WMO international event.

The WMO Professor Mariolopoulos Award was created in 1996 by the Mariolopoulos-Kanaginis Foundation for the Environmental Sciences, which is in Athens, Greece. The Award is granted every year in recognition of young scientists (age below 35 years by the date of publication) for exceptional contributions to meteorology and climatology.

Shingirai Nangombe comes from Zimbabwe. Supported by the CAS-TWAS President’s Fellowship Programme, he studied for a PhD degree at IAP from 2017 to 2019. His research focused on the detection, attribution and projection of climate change in Africa. Under the guidance of his supervisor, he collaborated with his team members and completed the paper. His award-winning paper revealed limiting global warming to 1.5°C instead of 2°C would have considerable paybacks for Africa in terms of reducing heat extremes and droughts and their associated socio-economic impacts.

Nangombe, S., T. Zhou, W. Zhang, B. Wu, S. Hu, L. Zou, and D. Li, 2018: Record-breaking climate extremes in Africa under stabilized 1.5 °C and 2°C global warming scenarios. Nat. Clim. Chang., 8, 375–380.

  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0145-6