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Associate Professor
Office: ES 321
Education Broadly trained as a physical geographer and a meteorologist, I have a strong interest in interdisciplinary research related to land surface remote sensing, weather and climate. For example, I would like to investigate how changes in land surface modify local, regional and global climate and hydrology at diurnal, seasonal, and longer time scales, and how climate changes affect ecosystems, land surface processes, our human systems and environment. I find it very exciting in using satellite remote sensing data to identify weather and climate model deficiencies in land surface processes and to improve model’s forecast and simulation capabilities. I am also fascinated with climate change associated with changes in land surface. I examine extensively changes in spatiotemporal patterns and magnitude in key hydro-climate variables from observations and model outputs. I combine some unique methods and techniques such as quantitative analyses (e.g., time series analysis, statistical and geospatial methods) of observational and remote sensing/GIS data with physical modeling of land-climate processes (e.g., via regional and global models). I am extending my research into the human dimension of land-climate interactions, focusing on quantifying and projecting social-economic consequences of climatic change and impacts of human activities on our ecosystems, weather and climate systems. My studies have produced some important and interesting results, among which are the findings of climate-induced greening and biomass increases in northern mid- to high-latitudes, significant effects of urbanization on climate in China, the asymmetric warming of drought and desertification on maximum/minimum temperatures over the Sahel, an inverse linear relationship between albedo and emissivity over barren soils, and the fingerprint of anthropogenic signals in observed and multi-model simulated extreme temperatures. The overarching objective of my research is to advance our understanding of land-human-climate interactions from the perspective of a changing land surface through a synthetic analysis of surface observations and remotely sensed and GIS data with Earth system modeling. To be specific, I will use satellite and GIS data, in situ observations and economic/societal information, and Earth system models to understand physical processes/mechanisms and interactions of land-human-climate systems, and to improve our model capability to predict climate and to assess climatic impacts and consequence on our environment, currently, and in the future. Land surface processes related to deforestation, irrigation, fires, urbanization, desertification, and renewable energy will be my emphases.
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