Zhanqing Li

University of Maryland College Park

Biography 

Zhanqing Li is a distinguished university professor (DUP) at the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China, in 1983 and 1989, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from McGill University, Canada, in 1991. After pursing one-year postdoctoral research at the Meteorological Service of Canada, he became a research scientist (II-IV) at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. In 2001, he moved to USA to become a full professor at UMCP, and a DUP in 2022.

His research interests include remote sensing, atmospheric physics and chemistry, climate and environment focusing on aerosol, cloud, radiation budget, precipitation, air quality (AQ), biomass burning. At present, his main research themes are aerosol-cloud-interactions, air pollution (AP) and public health, planetary-boundary-layer (PBL), and PBL-AQ-Cloud interactions. He has authored 416 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited ~31000 with a h-index of 93, and has been ranked among the top 0.1% most highly cited researchers since 2020.

Dr. Li is a fellow of AMS, AGU, and AAAS. He has received a dozen of awards including the AGU’s Y. Kaufman Award, the Head of Public Service Award of Canada, the Humboldt Research Award of Germany. He has served as an Editor of Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmosphere (2013-2020) and the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (since 2020).  He has served on numerous committees such as the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the US Academies, Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate of the WMO, the AGU/AS Yoram Kaufman Award Committee, the AMS Atmospheric Chemistry Committee and Satellite Meteorological Committee.

Abstract: Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation (CAR): the CAR Driving Earth’s Energy and Water Cycles and the Earth’s Climate Engine

Earth’s climate is chiefly driven by its energy and water cycles that are mobilized by the earth’s radiation budget altered mostly by clouds and aerosols. Cloud processes have been recognized as the largest sources of uncertainty in projecting future climate changes in response to increasing greenhouse gases, while the aerosol-radiation-interaction (ARI) and aerosol-cloud-interaction (ACI) exert the most uncertain forcing to the climate system. As such, the CAR is the most complicated vehicle driving our earth’s climate system. 
In this lecture, I’ll provide both a historical perspective and a landscape overview of the frontiers associated with the CAR dated to 1990s, the beginning of a golden era brought up by the emerging earth system sciences thanks partially to the NASA’s Earth Observation System (EOS), offering unprecedented opportunities to monitor all the parts of the CAR (aerosol, cloud and radiation) and their interactions, and some major milestones achieved concerning the breakdown of radiation budget or energy disposition and the roles of clouds and aerosols through global observation from space and ground (cloud microphysics and vertical structure), the ARI and ACI and their impact on weather and climate by altering the energy and water cycles. Besides, they also play important roles in extreme weather events (drought and floods, heat waves, lightning and thunderstorms, etc.).  As such, all three key parts of the CAR have been identified as the central thrusts of high priority in the US Decadal Survey in geosciences.