My work spans climate change, climate risks, stakeholder engagement, and translating science into actionable solutions. My research has been cited 993 times (Google Scholar, 10/2025) and is recognized by the IPCC 2021 report.
My insights have been featured in MIT News and platforms like the UNDRR (United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction).

View full publication list on Google Scholar (list does not include MIT technical and internal reports).
Select High-Impact Publications

Local-Scale Risk Analysis via Cutting-Edge Projections

Komurcu, M., Emanuel, K. A., Huber, M., & Acosta, R. P. (2018). High-resolution climate projections for the northeastern United States using dynamical downscaling at convection-permitting scales. Earth and Space Science, 5.https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EA000426
  • Impact: Top-read journal article; cited by IPCC 2021 as promising for local-scale risk assessments; featured in MIT News. Created the first 3 km resolution climate dataset (>2 Petabytes) for the Northeastern U.S., enabling regional adaptation planning.
  • Related Projects: This foundation supports high-impact applied work for the Northeastern U.S. Climate Projections, Saudi Arabia (KSA), Istanbul, and U.S. National Grid projects.

Aerosol-Cloud Interactions & Climate Sensitivity

​Komurcu, M., Storelvmo, T., Tan, I., Lohmann, U., Yun, Y., Penner, J. E., Wang, Y., Liu, X., & Takemura, T. (2014). Intercomparison of the cloud water phase among global climate models. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 119(6), 3372-3400. https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JD021119
  • Impact: Highly cited study; first international inter-comparison of vertical cloud phase among climate models. Led collaboration with IPCC authors from ETH Zurich, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Michigan, and Yonsei University. Findings influenced improvements to cloud microphysics parameterizations in multiple climate models.

Nature-Inspired Optimization

Bayraktar, Z., Komurcu, M., Bossard, J. A., & Werner, D. H. (2013). The wind driven optimization technique and its application in electromagnetics. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 61(5), 2745-2757.https://doi.org/10.1109/TAP.2013.2238654
  • Impact: Highly cited interdisciplinary work developing nature-inspired computational optimization. The Wind Driven Optimization (WDO) algorithm has applications across multiple fields.

Federal Climate Data Strategy

Co-authored 3 chapters of the USGCRP-sponsored workshop report: Understanding Decision-Relevant Climate Data Products (2024), alongside National Climate Assessment authors.
  • Impact: Contributed to federal strategy on climate data products and services.
  • Related Role: NASA Climate Science & Applications Leadership.
Research to Application

My publications provide the scientific foundation for stakeholder-focused work:
  • Regional climate modeling → Northeastern U.S., Saudi Arabia, Istanbul projects.
  • Climate data and model evaluation → Northeast U.S., Saudi Arabia, Yale University projects.
  • Computational expertise → Large-scale HPC implementations and petabyte-scale data management.
  • AI/ML applications → Early 2000s air quality work through current AI/DL climate proposals.
Explore how research translates to impact: click on the Featured Projects tab above.
Contact

For collaboration inquiries, media requests, or speaking opportunities, please reach me via email: muge [at] mit [dot] edu.
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