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

Guan, Weina, Xianan Jiang, Xuejuan Ren, Gang Chen and Qinghua Ding, 2021: Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies as important boundary forcing in driving the interannual Warm Arctic-Cold Continent pattern over the North American sector , Journal of Climate, 1--43, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0867.1.

Zhang, Pengfei, Yutian Wu, Gang Chen and Yueyue Yu, 2020: North American cold events following sudden stratospheric warming in the presence of low Barents-Kara Sea sea ice , Environmental Research Letters, 15, 124017, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abc215.

Ma, Weiming, Gang Chen and Bin Guan, 2020: Poleward Shift of Atmospheric Rivers in the Southern Hemisphere in Recent Decades , Geophysical Research Letters, 47, doi:10.1029/2020GL089934.

Guan, Weina, Xianan Jiang, Xuejuan Ren, Gang Chen, Pu Lin and Hai Lin, 2020: The Leading Intraseasonal Variability Mode of Wintertime Surface Air Temperature over the North American Sector , Journal of Climate, 33, 9287--9306, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0096.1.

Yang, Huang, Darryn W. Waugh, Clara Orbe and Gang Chen, 2020: Dependence of Atmospheric Transport Into the Arctic on the Meridional Extent of the Hadley Cell , Geophysical Research Letters, 47, 1--11, doi:10.1029/2020GL090133.