Abstract

Accompanying economic development and booms in energy consumption, Asian countries are suffering from serious aerosol pollution, posing great threats to human health, ecosystem and climate system. The formation of aerosol pollution is highly regulated by meteorological conditions, in addition to emissions of air pollutants. On the other hand, aerosols affect weather and climate through multiple pathways, including reducing downward solar radiation through absorption and scattering (direct effect), changing temperature, wind speed, RH and atmospheric stability due to absorption by absorbing aerosols (semi-direct effect), serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and thus impacting optical properties of clouds (first indirect effect), and affecting cloud coverage, lifetime of clouds and precipitation. These interactions are particularly important in high-emitting regions, and this talk will discuss some of these processes. 

Biography

Prof. Meng Gao received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Iowa in 2015. Before joining Hong Kong Baptist University, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. His research focuses on atmospheric chemistry and climate modeling, chemistry-climate interactions, and climate change mitigation. He has published ~140 peer-reviewed papers in top-tier journals including Science Advances, PNAS, Nature Communications and Nature Food. He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and receipt of multiple awards, such as the Xie Yibing Youth Meteorological Science and Technology Award and the European Geoscience Union Atmospheric Science Division Outstanding Young Scientist. He is an associate editor of the Urban Climate journal, Atmospheric Measurement Technique and Science of the Total Environment. He is also a member of the World Meteorological Organization Global Air Quality Forecasting and Information System (GAFIS) Steering Committee and the Physical Sciences Panel of the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong.