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

Wang, Yuan, Tianhao Le, Gang Chen, Yuk L Yung, Hui Su, John H Seinfeld and Jonathan H Jiang, 2020: Reduced European aerosol emissions suppress winter extremes over northern Eurasia , Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/s41558-020-0693-4.

Linz, Marianna, Gang Chen, Boer Zhang and Pengfei Zhang, 2020: A framework for understanding how dynamics shape temperature distributions , Geophysical Research Letters, e2019GL085684, doi:10.1029/2019GL085684.

Chen, Gang, Pengfei Zhang and Jian Lu, 2020: Sensitivity of the latitude of the westerly jet stream to climate forcing , Geophysical Research Letters, e2019GL086563.

Ma, Weiming, Jesse Norris and Gang Chen, 2020: Projected Changes to Extreme Precipitation Along North American West Coast From the CESM Large Ensemble , Geophysical Research Letters, 47, 1--10, doi:10.1029/2019GL086038.

Sun, Wenxiu, Peter Hess, Gang Chen and Simone Tilmes, 2019: How waviness in the circulation changes surface ozone: a viewpoint using local finite-amplitude wave activity , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 19, 12917--12933, doi:10.5194/acp-19-12917-2019.