Zilin Wang

Nanjing University | NJU · Department of Meteorology

Every spring, biomass burning (BB) plumes from the Indochina Peninsula (ICP) are transported downstream by specific synoptic weather processes, potentially influencing regional weather through radiative effects of BB aerosols. However, the favorable weather patterns for transport toward inland China and how they interact with BB aerosols are not fu...

Biomass burning (BB) is one of the largest sources of trace gases and primary carbonaceous particles in the global troposphere, posing great impacts on air quality and regional climate. Accurate quantification of BB emissions is vital for assessing its environmental and climate impacts. However, there are still large uncertainties in current BB emi...

The Gobi Desert is a prominent dust source in Asia, where the dust storm is severe and features great interannual and seasonal variability. Previous studies have found land surface variation plausibly plays an important role in the occurrence and intensity of dust storms. However, the quantitative estimation and numerical description in current mod...

Plain Language Summary As the world's largest carbon emitter, China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 as an active response to climate change. China's climate strategies and efforts to reduce carbon emissions will promisingly benefit the air quality through reducing particulate matter air...

Siberian wildfire is of paramount importance in the carbon cycle and climate change as it is a major disturbance in the pan‐Arctic ecosystems. In recent decades, the Siberian wildfire regime has been shifting; however, less is known about its process‐based feedback mechanisms. By integrating in‐situ and satellite observational data sets as well as...

Wildfires have long been regarded as one chief culprit in regional air pollution, and pose great impacts on climate change. Although climate forcing of wildfire smoke has been widely investigated, its influence on synoptic systems remains unclear. Based on measurement and modeling analysis, the impact of wildfire smoke on the development of a mid‐l...

Large uncertainties persist within current biomass burning (BB) inventories, and the choice of these inventories can substantially impact model results when assessing the influence of BB aerosols on weather and climate. We evaluated discrepancies among BB emission inventories by comparing carbon monoxide (CO) and organic carbon (OC) emissions from...

China's severe particle pollution could affect the regional climate and weather conditions that consequently threaten local to global food security. Yet, the underlying mechanisms and quantitative assessment of aerosols on crop yields remain unknown. Here, by integrating a meteorology–chemistry model and a crop model, we show the impacts of atmosph...

Although air quality in China has improved substantially over recent years, haze pollution events still occur frequently, especially over the North China Plain (NCP). Previous studies showed that typhoons are conducive to regional pollution events in eastern China; however, the underlying mechanism and quantitative understanding of the typhoons' im...

Interannual variability of tropical fire activity has been linked to the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Here we analyze changes in fire and simultaneous fire weather related to ENSO over Southeast (SEAS) and Equatorial Asia (EQAS) and quantitively evaluate the contribution of key meteorological variables to the fire weather variations for the...

Biomass burning (BB) emission inventories are often used to understand the interactions of aerosols with weather and climate. However, large uncertainties exist among current BB inventories, so the choice of inventories can greatly affect model results. To quantify the differences among BB emission inventories and reveal their reasons, we compared...

Radiative absorption of black carbon (BC) is of great importance in air quality and climate change. Simultaneous mitigation of haze pollution and climate warming requires an in‐depth understanding of haze‐BC‐climate connections based on direct observations. We simultaneously performed measurements in the North China Plain (NCP) and the Yangtze Rive...

Though China's air quality has been improved in the past decade, haze still engulfs megacities in winter with fast increasing secondary aerosol like nitrate. Given that aerosol and its precursors exhibit great vertical heterogeneity, we conducted airship measurements at Shanghai in December 2017 to understand the critical drivers for the rapidly in...

Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in the climate system because of its strong warming effect, yet the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain owing to the complex mixing state of aerosols. Here we build a unified theoretical framework to describe BC’s mixing states, linking dynamic processes to BC coating thickness distribution, and sh...

Extreme wildfires threaten human lives, air quality, and ecosystems. Meteorology plays a vital role in wildfire behaviors, and the links between wildfires and climate have been widely studied. However, it is not fully clear how fire-weather feedback affects short-term wildfire variability, which undermines our ability to mitigate fire disasters. He...

Plain Language Summary New particle formation (NPF) is a worldwide phenomenon and is regarded as a major contributor to the global cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) as well as to air pollution. Given the vertically varied cloud distribution and the vital role of NPF in CCN, it is of great importance to understand the vertical structure of NPF. Howeve...

Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in the climate system due to its strong warming effect, yet the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain due to the complex mixing state of aerosols. Here we build a unified theoretical framework to describe BC’s mixing states, linking dynamic processes to BC coating thickness distribution, and show its...

The North China Plain has been suffering from severe haze pollution in the past few decades. In addition to rapid urbanization and intensive anthropogenic emissions, the complex terrain in this region greatly influences the atmospheric circulation, thereby weakening the ventilation of air pollutants. Nevertheless, the vertical responses of surface-...

As one of the largest dust source regions, China suffers from frequent dust storms in spring. During the super dust storm in March 2021, a rapid increase in nocturnal surface ozone concentration was observed along with elevated dust loading. Ground-based and satellite observations as well as reanalysis data of air quality and meteorology are integr...

Extreme wildfires increasingly threaten human lives, infrastructure, air quality, and ecosystem services. Meteorology plays a vital role in wildfire activities, and thus the relationship between wildfire intensity and climate change has been widely studied. However, it remains unclear how fire-weather interactions affect short-term fire variability...

Purpose of Review Atmospheric aerosol from both natural and anthropogenic activities has long been acknowledged as one of the important factors influencing regional and global climate change. Many regions around the globe experienced high aerosol loadings because of intensive emissions, yet the roles of atmospheric aerosols in extreme meteorologica...

Low clouds play a key role in the Earth-atmosphere energy balance and influence agricultural production and solar-power generation. Smoke aloft has been found to enhance marine stratocumulus through aerosol-cloud interactions, but its role in regions with strong human activities and complex monsoon circulation remains unclear. Here we show that bio...

Wildfires threaten human lives, destroy infrastructure, disrupt economic activity, and damage ecosystem services. A record-breaking gigafire event ravaged the western United States (USA) in mid-September 2020, burning 1.2 million acres (4,900 km2) in Oregon and California, and resulting in severe smoke pollution with daily fine particulate matter (...

In recent years, nitrate plays an increasingly important role in haze pollution and strict emission control seems ineffective in reducing nitrate pollution in China. In this study, observations of gaseous and particulate pollutants during the COVID-19 lockdown, as well as numerical modelling were integrated to explore the underlying causes of the n...

Wind-blown dust plays a crucial role in air quality, biogeochemical cycles, and climate change. In East Asia, one of the main dust source regions in the world, dust storms frequently engulf eastern China, with a substantial negative effect on air pollution and the ecological environment. By integrating multiple observations and the online coupled m...

Anthropogenic emissions were greatly constrained during COVID-19 lockdown in China. Nevertheless, observations still showed high loadings of fine particles (PM2.5) over northern China with secondary aerosols increasing by 15 μg/m3 yet a ∼10% drop in light-absorbing black carbon (BC). Such a chemical transition in aerosol composition tended to make...

East Asia features frequent dust storms and intensive anthropogenic emissions. The mixing of natural dust and anthropogenic pollutants exerts complicated impacts on air pollution and regional climate. Studies have focused on chemical interactions of the mixed pollution, while the meteorological feedback and influences on atmospheric chemistry have...

Although air quality in China has substantially improved since 2013 as a consequence of the clean air action, severe haze events still frequently strike megacities despite strict local emissions reduction efforts. Long-range transport and local accumulation as well as chemical transformation have been deemed as key factors of heavy haze pollution;...

Low clouds play a key role in the Earth-atmosphere energy balance and influence agricultural production and solar-power generation. Smoke aloft has been found to enhance marine stratocumulus over the Southeast Atlantic in austral spring through aerosol-cloud interactions, but its role in regions with strong human activities and complex monsoon circ...

Eastern China has been facing severe winter haze pollution due mainly to secondary aerosol. Existing studies have suggested that stagnant weather or fast chemical production led to frequent haze in this region. However, few work focuses on the linkage between secondary production of sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium (SNA) and synoptic conditions, and...

The feedback between ambient aerosols and planetary boundary layer (PBL) meteorology has been proven to play a critical role in the enhancement of haze pollution. Vertical distribution of aerosols as well as temperature stratification are vital to understand aerosol – boundary layer interaction (ABI) and its impact on air quality deterioration. In...

Atmospheric aerosols have been found to influence the development of planetary boundary layer (PBL) and hence to enhance haze pollution in megacities. Previous works on aerosol-PBL interaction were mainly based on model simulation for short-term cases; so far, there is a lack of long-term observational evidences. In this study, based on multiyear m...

Black carbon (BC) has been identified to play a critical role in aerosol–planetary boundary layer (PBL) interaction and further deterioration of near-surface air pollution in megacities, which has been referred to as the “dome effect”. However, the impacts of key factors that influence this effect, such as the vertical distribution and aging proces...

Black carbon (BC) has been identified to play a critical role in aerosol-planet boundary layer (PBL) interaction and further deterioration of near-surface air pollution in megacities, which has been named as its dome effect. However, the impacts of key factors that influence this effect, such as the vertical distribution and aging processes of BC,...