Zhen Qu

Bio

I am an atmospheric chemist. My research aims to understand how human activities are altering atmospheric composition, and how these changes interact with climate change. I utilize statistics, high-performance computing, and satellite observations to investigate the sources, chemical formation, spatial distributions, and trends of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. I develop algorithms and modeling approaches to expand our process-level understanding of man-made and natural emissions. I also apply atmospheric chemistry models to understand the sensitivity of air pollution and human exposure to the emissions of precursor gases.

I teach MEA 425/525 Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry and MEA 412 Atmospheric Physics.

I am looking for motivated students to join my group. Please visit my group’s webpage for additional details.

Group Webpage

Area(s) of Expertise

Satellite observations of atmospheric composition
Atmospheric chemistry and air quality modeling
Bayesian statistics, inverse modeling, data assimilation, and machine learning

Publications

• Assessing the relative impacts of satellite ozone and its precursor observations to improve global tropospheric ozone analysis using multiple chemical reanalysis systems , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2025)
• What can we learn about tropospheric OH from satellite observations of methane? , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2025)
• High-resolution US methane emissions inferred from an inversion of 2019 TROPOMI satellite data: contributions from individual states, urban areas, and landfills , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2024)
• Inverse modeling of 2010-2022 satellite observations shows that inundation of the wet tropics drove the 2020-2022 methane surge , PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (2024)
• Particulate matter from wildfire smoke in northern Colorado appears to be associated with conjunctivitis in dogs , JAVMA-JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (2024)
• East Asian methane emissions inferred from high-resolution inversions of GOSAT and TROPOMI observations: a comparative and evaluative analysis , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2023)
• Observation-derived 2010-2019 trends in methane emissions and intensities from US oil and fields tied to metrics , PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (2023)
• Attribution of the 2020 surge in atmospheric methane by inverse analysis of GOSAT observations , Environmental Research Letters (2022)
• Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI 1.0): a user-friendly, cloud-based facility for inferring high-resolution methane emissions from TROPOMI satellite observations , Geoscientific Model Development (2022)
• Methane emissions from China: a high-resolution inversion of TROPOMI satellite observations , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)

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