Our lab had a strong show at the AGU Fall Meeting held in Chicago. Dr. Wang talked about our work on machine learning-based crop yield modeling, Yan talked about her research on how temperature and water stress influence ecosystem productivity, Yelin presented his study on the role of soil moisture and soil temperature as sources of subseasonal predictability, Koushan presented his latest analysis on SIF RCI and flash drought early warning based on multiple datasets, and Badhan presented her progress in climate downscaling using a deep learning approach! It was Yan’s first oral presentation at AGU and she did a great job!

Yelin Jiang successfully defended his PhD dissertation and is taking a postdoc job at Columbia University. Congratulations Dr. Jiang!

Dr. Wang participated in a UConn panel discussing climate change and energy sustainability. Read the UConn Today article here.

Congratulations to Qinqing and Meijian for the publication of a highly interdisciplinary paper in AIES! It is an exemplary  collaboration between AI experts and process-based modelers to predict crop yield in the U.S. Corn Belt: “Machine learning crop yield models based on meteorological features and comparison with a process-based model”, Artificial Intelligence for Earth Systems, 1(4), https://doi.org/10.1175/AIES-D-22-0002.1

Meanwhile, our PNAS paper continues to garner media attention. Here is a comprehensive piece from the New York Public Radio: https://gothamist.com/news/a-plants-glow-can-predict-some-droughts-weeks-in-advance-uconn

Dr. Xiaoming Sun’s paper on negative scaling of extreme precipitation has been published! Congratulations Xiaoming!

Sun & Wang, 2022: Causes for the negative scaling of extreme precipitation at high temperatures. Journal of Climate, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-22-0142.1

The lab welcomed new PhD student Faisal Alvee. Faisal received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. His PhD research will focus on understanding and predicting extreme precipitation in a changing climate. Welcome Faisal!

Koushan’s paper on SIF-based flash drought early warning has been published in PNAS. Congratulations!  https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202767119 

Click here to read the UConn Today article on our lab’s new publication:

For Advance Drought Warning, Look to the Plants

Two new papers from our lab have been published recently:

Erfanian et al. on “Variability, trend, and extremes of the South American vegetation-climate system: Results from a coupled regional model” in JGR-Atmospheres
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JD035691

Wang & Sun on “Monotonic increase of extreme precipitation intensity with temperature when controlled for saturation deficit” in Geophysical Research Letters

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2022GL097881

Congrats!

Several members of our lab presented during this past conference season (AGU in December and AMS in January):

Dr. Meijian Yang presented his work on crop yield changes in Ethiopia as a panelist in the AMS Presidential Session on water security; Mr. Koushan Mohammadi presented his work on flash drought early warning based on remote sensing data (AGU); Dr. Guiling Wang talked about extreme precipitation scaling with temperature in saturated and unsaturated atmosphere and how it changes with climate (AMS); Mr. Yelin Jiang presented his work on S2S land-atmosphere interactions over the tropical South America (AGU), on ecohydrological responses to drought (AMS), and on a new method to initialize soil moisture/temperature in S2S simulations at the CESM workshop that took place immediately after the AMS conference!

And congratulations to Yelin on the publication of his paper “Eco-hydrological responses to recent droughts in tropical South America” in Environmental Research Letters!

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac507a

Makduma Zahan Bahan joins the lab as a new PhD student. Badhan received her B.S. degree from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Welcome Badhan!

Dr. Wang has been appointed to serve as an author for the Land Cover & Land Use Change chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5). The National Climate Assessment is the U.S. Government’s premier report on climate change impacts, risks, and adaptation across the Nation. It is a Congressionally mandated, interagency effort that brings together experts from governments, academic, non-profit, and private sectors. Congrats!

Congratulations is also due to Dr. Wang on her election as Fellow of the American Meteorological Society!

https://cee.engr.uconn.edu/dr-guiling-wang-elected-as-ams-fellow.html

https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-awards-honors/2022-awards-and-honors-recipients/

 

 

Meijian Yang successfully defended his PhD dissertation, and took a postdoctoral position in Cornell University. Congratulations, Dr. Yang! We will miss you.

This month, Yelin’s paper titled “Modeled response of South American climate to three decades of deforestation” was published in Journal of Climate!  Congrats Yelin!

During January 10th -15th, the 101th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), originally to be held in New Orlean, took place virtually. Dr. Wang was Annual Meeting Program Co-Chair for the Conference of Hydrology under AMS. In the scientific program, Dr. Wang gave a presentation titled “Recent Decrease of Vegetation Productivity in South America due to a Warming-Induced Drying Trend”. In addition, she organized a very well-attended Town Hall “Her Career, Her Stories” that “brings women together to share experience, challenges, and success, to inspire and empower each other, and to foster the development of mentoring relationships”. This remarkable event featured panelists Drs. Ana Barros, Terri Hogue, Ruby Leung, Christa Peters-Lidard, and Ms. Britt Westergard. All of them were amazing role models, and shared so much experience and wisdom with a large crowd. Many thanks to the panelists, and congrats to Dr. Wang for the success in organizing this TH!