The focus of my research group is the fundamental dynamics in atmospheric circulation and chemical transport. Through a combination of theory and numerical modeling, we develope toolboxes to understand the global circulation of the atmosphere, from tropical Hadley cell circulations to extratropical storm systems, from tropospheric extreme weather to stratospheric polar vortex breakdown events, and from transport of water vapor to stratosphere-troposphere exchange of ozone. These processes are instrumental to our understanding of weather extremes (e.g. winter blizzards or heat waves), hydrological extremes (e.g., drought or flooding), or extreme air pollution. Our research can be categorized in two interrelated themes.

• Global atmospheric circulation and regional weather extremes
• Transport of atmospheric moisture and chemical species

For example, transport and mixing near the tropopause (~10km above the ground) can be illustrated in the animantion of Ertel’s Potential Vorticity (left) and O3 mixing ratio (right):

Recent Publications

Lu, Jian, Daokai Xue, Yang Gao, Gang Chen, L. R. Leung and Paul Staten, 2018: Enhanced hydrological extremes in the western United States under global warming through the lens of water vapor wave activity , npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 1, 7, doi:10.1038/s41612-018-0017-9.

Wu, Yutian, Gang Chen, Lindsey Taylor and Pengfei Zhang, 2018: On the Linkage Between the Asian Summer Monsoon and Tropopause Folds , Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 123, 2037--2049, doi:10.1002/2017JD027870.

Martineau, Patrick, Gang Chen, Seok-Woo Son and Joowan Kim, 2018: Lower-stratospheric control of the frequency of sudden stratospheric warming events , Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, doi:10.1002/2017JD027648.

Martineau, Patrick, Gang Chen and D. Alex Burrows, 2017: Wave Events: Climatology, Trends, and Relationship to Northern Hemisphere Winter Blocking and Weather Extremes , Journal of Climate, 30, 5675--5697, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0692.1.

Xue, Daokai, Jian Lu, Lantao Sun, Gang Chen and Yaocun Zhang, 2017: Local increase of anticyclonic wave activity over northern Eurasia under amplified Arctic warming , Geophysical Research Letters, 44, 3299--3308, doi:10.1002/2017GL072649.