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Zhen Liu
Ph.D candidate & Research Assistant
Office: Molecular Sciences & Engineering Building, Rm 3231 |
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The chemical composition of the atmosphere is a vital aspect of our living environment on the earth. Human activities have been modifying such environment by emissions of various pollutants. A direct consequence is the enhancement of concentrations of some hazardous elements near the surface, a phenomenon known as air pollution. Moreover, due to the complex chemistry and physical processes in the atmospheric and the entire earth system, human perturbations could also have greater and longer-term impacts, i.e. affecting the cycling of chemical elements and the climate of the earth. The ability to predict and cope with the possible future consequences due to human activities relies on valid descriptions of the distributions and evolutions of atmospheric composition. The goal of my research is to improve such ability.
In my research, statistical [Xie et al., 2008] and numerical approaches are employed to explore information underlying in chemical data sets from various platforms, e.g. ground sites, satellite, aircrafts, over different parts of the atmosphere, including those heavily polluted environments, e.g. near the surface over East Asia [Xie et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2010; Yang et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2012], or remote environments that are vulnerable to human impacts, e.g. free troposphere over the Arctic region [Hecobian et al., 2011]. Through examining the state-of-the-science of atmospheric chemistry and physics against the information in these data, the key processes regulating the abundance and variations of the observed chemicals could be explained, or else uncertain/unknown aspects of current knowledge could be identified. Meanwhile, by applying chemical transport models (CTMs) at multi-scales (0-D, 1-D, 3-D regional to global), it is possible to explore the sensitivities and feedbacks in the complex atmospheric chemical system, and some important and yet not apparent mechanisms could be discovered and understood.