Sun Wong
| Title | Assistant Research Scientist |
| Research Interests | Atmospheric dynamics and chemistry. Climate variability. Tracer transport. Analysis of data from general circulation models, chemical transport models, and remote sensing. |
| Education | Ph. D., Physics, Columbia University, 1999. |
| Office Location | Room Rm. 904 , O&M Bldg |
| Office Phone | (979) 458 0554 |
| Fax | 979-862-4466 |
| swong@ariel.met.tamu.edu | |
| Mailing Address |
Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas A&M University 3150 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-3150 |
Research Interests
My research focuses on interactions between the atmospheric dynamical and constituent fields. This helps understand variablity in both climate and atmospheric chemical systems. My recent interest is in the properties of the Saharan Air Layer, which provides a good example for interactions among dust, low-level warm and dry anomalies, convective systems, and West African monsoon. The warm and dry air layer near the west coast of Africa is related to the radiative heating of dust. Its evolution is related to West African Monsoon, which influences the rainfall pattern in west Africa, and affects the transport of dust out of the African continent. The air layer also has the ability to suppress deep convection, which influences the development of tropical cyclones.
Other examples of the interactions include the variability of tropopause heights and temperatures, the variability of long-lived tracers' lifetimes, and the variability of the Antarctic ozone hole. These examples are all related to the variability of stratospheric planetary wave activity, which affects the tropical upward motion and the temperature in polar regions. In the tropics, the interannual variation of tropopause temperature is also influenced by the quasi-biennial oscillation and the El Nino Southern Oscillation.
The methods I use involve statistical analyses of data from both models and remote sensing satellites, and developments of coupled models (based on general circulation models and chemical transport models). Applying similar statistical analyses to both simulation and remote sensing data also provide a robust means for model evaluations.
Selected Publications
Wong, S., A. E. Dessler, N. Mahowald, P. R. Colarco, and A. da Silva (2008), Long-term variability in Saharan dust transport and its link to North Atlantic sea surface temperature, Geophys. Res. Lett., in press.
Wong, S., and A. E. Dessler (2007), Regulation of H2O and CO in tropical tropopause layer by the Madden-Julian oscillation, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D14305, doi:10.1029/2006JD007940.
Wong, S., P. R. Colarco, and A. E. Dessler (2006), Principal component analysis of the evolution of the Saharan air layer and dust transport: Comparisons between a model simulation and MODIS and AIRS retrievals, J. Geophys. Res., 111, D20109, doi:10.1029/2006JD007093.
Wong, S., and A. E. Dessler (2005), Suppression of deep convection over the tropical North Atlantic by the Saharan Air Layer, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L09808, doi:10.1029/2004GL022295.
Wong, S., W. -C. Wang, I. S. A. Isaksen, T. K. Berntsen, and J. K. Sundet (2004), A global climate-chemistry model study of present-day tropospheric chemistry and radiative forcing from changes in tropospheric O3 since the preindustrial period, J. Geophys. Res., 109, D11309, doi:10.1029/2003JD003998.
Wong, S., and W. -C. Wang (2003), Tropical-extratropical connection in interannual variation of the tropopause: Comparison between NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and an atmospheric general circulation model simulation, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D2), 4043, doi:10.1029/2001JD002016.
Wong, S., M. J. Prather, and D. H. Rind (1999), The seasonal and interannual variability of the budgets of N2O and CCl3F, J. Geophys. Res., 104, 23,899-23,909.
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