International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, IEAS

Academician

Minghua ZHANG

Profile:

Elected Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2006, Professor Minghua Zhang is a Chinese-American atmospheric scientist whose research and professional work have focused on climate modelling and global climate change, physical parameterisation in general circulation models, satellite remote sensing and data assimilation, and the dynamics of large-scale atmospheric waves. Born in February 1962 in Wujiang, Jiangsu Province, he studied atmospheric physics at Nanjing Institute of Meteorology, completing his bachelor’s degree in 1982 and master’s degree in 1984. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1987 under Academician Zeng Qingcun. After a period of research at the Institute, he moved to Stony Brook University in 1987, where he completed postdoctoral research in 1988–1990 and subsequently held academic positions from Assistant Professor to Professor. He served as Director of the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres, Associate Dean and Dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. He is currently Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a member of the US Department of Energy’s Advisory Committee on Biological and Environmental Research, and an Honorary Professor of Tsinghua University and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. A Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the IPCC.

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Professor Zhang’s research has centred on improving the representation of physical processes in global climate models and understanding their effects on climate variability and change. Particular attention has been given to moist processes involving clouds, radiation, convection, and boundary-layer physics, together with the interactions and feedbacks among these processes. He has participated in and led field experiments combining upper-air and surface observations with model parameterisations, and developed a cloud-resolving parameterisation scheme that has been adopted by modelling groups internationally. His work on large-scale atmospheric waves examines their generation, propagation, and dissipation and their influence on atmospheric circulation, contributing to the understanding of weather and short-term climate variability. He contributed to the Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) and led international collaborative projects including the Cloud-Integrated Global Model Evaluation Project (CGILS), which investigates the physical mechanisms underlying low-cloud feedbacks. His research has been supported by the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. His work has appeared in Nature Communications, Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, and other peer-reviewed journals, receiving more than 12,000 citations. Through sustained research in climate modelling, integration of observations with numerical models, and international scientific collaboration, Professor Zhang has contributed to strengthening the physical basis of climate prediction and to the study of global climate change.