About Me

I am currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston majoring in Atmospheric Sciences. However, my career journey does not start from the atmosphere, yet the solid Earth. I am holding a bachelor's and master's degree in Geology from China, where I built a firm foundation in mathematics and natural sciences. Inspired by the more and more frequent extreme events around the world and their disastrous effects on human life, I decided to change my career path to atmospheric sciences aiming to help mitigate the adverse impact of climate change. Participating in multiple practical projects, I have developed considerable expertise in air quality data analysis, environmental modeling, and professional writing. More knowledge as I acquire from the atmospheric research field, more curious I become about the mysterious and elusive world we are living in. But I am ready to dive in......

Contact Details

Wei Li
University of Houston
Science & Research Building 1
3507 Cullen Blvd, Room 413
Houston, Texas 77204-5007
wli31@central.uh.edu

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Education

University of Houston

PhD in Atmospheric Sciences • August 2018 - present

China University of Geosciences, Beijing

M.S. Degree in Geology • August 2015 - June 2018

Hebei University of Engineering

B.S. Degree in Resources Exploration Engineering • August 2011 - June 2015

Work

Research/Teaching Assitant

Teacher and Data Analyzer • August 2018 - Present

As a teacher, I taught climate change labs and basic R programming. As a researcher, I used air quality observations from field campaigns in San Antonio and Houston to evaluate chemical transport models (e.g., GEOS-Chem). Supported by a NOAA AC4 funding, we are using data from long-term observational networks (e.g., AQS, CSN, IMPROVE) over the US to derive process-level metrics of how different atmospheric compositions change under droughts, and then use the metrics to evaluate the performance of coupled chemistry-climate models (e.g., CMIP6 models) regarding their capability of capturing the drought-air quality relationships.

Geology Field Survey

Field Worker • August 2015 - June 2018

I traveled around different provinces in China to observe rock types and tracked strata containing coal seams in the field. In the lab, I also observed sandstone's thin sections and coal polished sections using a microscope.

Skills

I use R and Python on a daily basis on a Linux system for my data analysis research work. I have experience running GEOs-Chem full-chemistry, passive tracer, and HEMCO standalone simulations. I also modified the source codes of GEOS-Chem to applied our satellite-based drought stress factor on isoprene emissions. WRF-CAMx and SMOKE are new skills I developed for a modeling project funded by TCEQ. Recently, I found Google Earth Engine is a very useful tool for map visualizations and want to pick it up.

  • Python
  • R
  • GEOS-Chem
  • WRF-CAMx/Chem
  • SMOKE
  • Earth Engine

Read My Works

Publications

Li, W., Wang, Y., Bernier, C., & Estes, M. (2020). Identification of sea breeze recirculation and its effects on ozone in Houston, TX, during DISCOVER‐AQ 2013. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(22), e2020JD033165.

Li, W., Wang, Y., Flynn, J., Griffin, R. J., Guo, F., & Schnell, J. L. (2021). Spatial variation of surface O3 responses to drought over the contiguous United States during summertime: role of precursor emissions and ozone chemistry. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, e2021JD035607.

Li, W., & Wang, Y. (2022). Reduced surface fine dust under droughts over the southeastern United States during summertime: observations and CMIP6 model simulations. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 7843–7859.

Presentations

  • Oral presentation at the 9th International GEOS-Chem Meeting (IGC9) 2019
  • Oral presentation at AGU Fall Meeting 2019
  • Poster presentation at AMS Meeting 2022
  • Oral presentation at the 10th International GEOS-Chem Meeting (IGC10) 2022

Get In Touch.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to collaborate! I am willing to work with motivated scientists and happy to expand my research to other interesting topics.