Fifth Article of a series featuring Early Career Scientists
Author: Chunsong Lu
Introduced by ICCP Member: Seong Soo Yum
Dr. Chunsong Lu is a full professor in the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST) in China. In 2012, he received his Ph.D under the joint supervision of Prof. Shengjie Niu at NUIST and Dr. Yangang Liu at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US. He has taken on the challenging but critical problems of turbulent entrainment-mixing processes and their interactions with cloud/fog microphysics. He has already published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers with 21 of them published in prestigious journals (e.g., Geophysical Research Letters) as the first/corresponding author. He has successfully led 4 research projects from National Natural Science Foundation of China, as the principal investigator. He is supervising 12 Master/Ph.D students. In recognition of his exceptional performance, NUIST endowed him a rare promotion from the rank of assistant professor to full professor in four years after Ph.D.
In 2015, Chunsong won the prestigious American Geophysical Union (AGU) Holton Junior Scientist Award, for the “original contributions in observational and modeling studies of cloud microphysics, turbulent mixing, and convective entrainment.” Prof. William K. M. Lau, who was then the President of Atmospheric Sciences section, described in the citation that “Chunsong has demonstrated exceptional purposefulness, creativity, and originality in the challenging and critical problems of convective entrainment, turbulent mixing processes, and their interactions with cloud/fog microphysics.” Furthermore, his outstanding accomplishments have been recognized by 20 other awards, including Yuxiang Young Scholar Award from Chinese American Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in the US, Exceptional Service Award from Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, Junior Faculty Fellow Award from Ministry of Education in China, TU Changwang Youth Meteorological Science and Technology Award from Chinese Meteorological Society.
Chunsong’s scientific achievements are mainly in three related fields. First, he developed a new approach for estimating entrainment rate in cumulus clouds and developed a new parameterization of entrainment rate, and applied it to climate models. The paper on entrainment rate parameterization (Lu et al., JAS, 2016) was selected as an Essential Science Indicators (ESI) highly cited paper. Second, he proposed new dynamical and microphysical measures to quantify different entrainment-mixing mechanisms and determined the most appropriate microphysical time scales. A new parameterization of entrainment-mixing mechanisms developed by him is applied in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. The new parameterization is found to reduce the simulation errors in total precipitation and probability density function of precipitation. Third, he established a conceptual model that could describe fog formation/dissipation and dissected main dynamical and thermodynamic factors. He proposed a new parameter that could be used to develop an approach for estimating ion concentrations in fog water.
Chunsong has contributed to various international scientific activities and cooperation. He was elected as a member of the International Commission on Clouds and Precipitation (ICCP) in 2016. Currently he serves as an editor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters. He also served as a reviewer for Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Israel Science Foundation (ISF), Outstanding Student Paper Award of AGU, and many international journals.
