Zong-Liang Yang

Biography

Dr. Zong-Liang Yang is a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences, Jackson School of Geosciences and currently holds the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Earth System Sciences. He is also a holder of Dave P. Carlton Centennial Professorship in Geology and Director of the Center for Integrated Earth System Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed journal articles (with a Web of Knowledge h-index of 53, total citation 13200 and a Google Scholar h-index of 64, total citation 22600). He teaches classes on physical climatology, hydroclimatology, land atmosphere interaction dynamics, and climate change. He has graduated 16 PhD students and 3 MS thesis students since coming to Austin in 2001. Before joining the faculty at UT-Austin, Dr. Yang was a postdoc and then research faculty at the University of Arizona and he holds a Ph.D. degree in Atmospheric Sciences from Macquarie University and an MS in Meteorology from University of Melbourne in Australia.

His research focuses on understanding and modeling of land-atmosphere exchanges of energy, mass and momentum, quantifying land climate interaction & feedback strengths, and exploring important applications of societal relevance such as prediction of hydrological extremes (floods and droughts). His approaches include theoretical work, data analysis and numerical modeling. His terrestrial hydrological parameterizations and land surface models (CLM and Noah-MP) are used by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (in two of its premier models, the Community Earth System Model and the Weather Research Forecasting model), the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (the Climate Forecast System), the U.S. National Water Center (the National Water Model) and other major modeling centers worldwide. These predictive models have proven extremely critical and beneficial in climate applications and in accurately forecasting extreme weather and water events (including recent Hurricane Harvey) and associated impacts. He also develops innovative dynamic downscaling methods that generate high-resolution regional climate information for impact assessments and resource decision-making. 

http://www.geo.utexas.edu/climate/recent_publications.html

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ZncpGB0AAAAJ