Professor Wang uses sophisticated weather models like WRF (The Weather Research and Forecasting Model), developed at The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), to study the structure and intensity of tropical cyclones. He has been looking at the effects of regional climate changes in the Eastern Pacific, East Asian Monsoon, and Hawaiian regions. He has found that relative humidity increases the size of the cyclones. Also, in the Indian Ocean, the sea surface temperature is increasing, and vertical shear is decreasing, from global warming, leading to more intense tropical cyclones in the future. However, in the Atlantic Ocean, there is an increased vertical shear, and no significant sea surface temperature increase. Therefore, his studies show no expected change in tropical cyclone intensity for the Atlantic Ocean waters due to global warming. These results will be published soon. Watch for them, and read about his other work at http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/~yqwang/.
Professor Wang earned his Ph.D. from Manash University in Australia in 1996, then worked for four years for the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, before coming to University of Hawai‘i to join the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) in 2000. He then accepted a joint position, joining the Department of Meteorology faculty in 2004. He teaches one undergraduate class in Dynamical Meteorology, and three graduate classes in Tropical Cyclones, Tropical Weather and Climate, and Physical Meteorology. He currently advises one Ph.D. candidate, one masters candidate, five post-docs, and one visiting scholar.
