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

• 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)
• 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)
• Methane emissions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico: evaluation of national methane emission inventories and 2010–2017 sectoral trends by inverse analysis of in situ (GLOBALVIEWplus CH<sub>4</sub> ObsPack) and satellite (GOSAT) atmospheric observations , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)
• Quantifying methane emissions from the global scale down to point sources using satellite observations of atmospheric methane , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)
• Satellite quantification of oil and natural gas methane emissions in the US and Canada including contributions from individual basins , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)
• Secondary PM2.5 decreases significantly less than NO2 emission reductions during COVID lockdown in Germany , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)

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