Jun 2026: Lei will give an invited talk at the 2026 S2S Land-atmosphere Interactions Workshop "Advancing Understanding of Land-Atmosphere Interactions and Processes on S2S Predictability."
May 2026: Congratulations to Yanjun on being selected to participate HeatHack summer school and CESM tutorial.
May 2026: We are glad to share formal group members' new destinations:
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Anh Nhu will join Google DeepMind as a student researcher.
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Chengxun Frank will start graduate school in Computer Sciences at Stanford University.
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Owen Odney will start a PhD program in Physics at University of Minnesota.
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Mahendra Nimmakanti will start a postdoc position at Stanford University.
May 2026: Lei earns a NOAA award. See here for a news report.
May 2026: Congratulations to Peter Forbin on successful defending his Master of Science degree! Peter's thesis is titled "Extratropical Cyclone Track Regimes as a Control on the Spatial and Seasonal Climatology of U.S. Tornadoes". Lei served as a co-advisor, with Dr. Dan Chavas serving as the primary advisor. Following his graduation, Peter will return to service with the United States Air Force. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to host him at Purdue and are proud of his accomplishments. We wish him continued success in his future endeavors!
May 2026: Lei gave an invited speak at the NCAR Earth System Predictability Across Timescales (ESPAT) Extremes WG meeting.
Apr 2026: Congratulations to Ka Ying Ho on winning the best presentation award at the Purdue EAPS Expo Research Blitz!
Apr 2026: Congratulations to Zhaoyu Liu, a PhD candidate in our group, received an Outstanding Student Presentation Award at the recent AMS Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas, in January 2026 for his presentation titled “On the Local Perspective of Rossby Wave Breaking.” AMS Annual Meeting is the world's largest yearly gathering for the weather, water, and climate community. We are very proud of Zhaoyu’s achievements!
Mar 2026: We are glad to share a new article titled “Gaps and Ways Forward in Atmospheric Blocking and Extreme Weather Research, as a Perspective article, has been published (link). For Nature Communications, it is highly selective to publish a Perspective article. Since its first issue in 2010, Nature Communications has published ~83000 research articles, yet only 294 Perspective articles - less than 0.3 % of the total number. According to the description (link), they are often invited by the editorial board to provide a forward-looking and authoritative view of the broader field and undergoes rigorous peer-review process. This paper was also supported by Purdue’s Elevating the Visibility of Research Seed Funding, for which we are grateful. See here for a news report.
Feb 2026: Lei delivered an invited keynote speech for the 30th Annual Weather, Water, and Climate Symposium at The Ohio State University.
Jan 2026: Lei served as a chair for the session "Machine Learning Applied to Geophysical Flows", a chair for the "Haurwitz Lecture", program committee for the "Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics", and primary convenor for the "The Dynamics of Large-Scale Atmospheric Circulation in Present and Future Climates: Jet Streams, Storm Tracks, Stationary Waves, and Monsoons."
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Jan 2026: Our group gave these presentations at the AMS 2026 at Houston:
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Lei Wang (talk): Predictability and Precursor Patterns of Atmospheric Blocking with Explainable AI (link)
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Chengxun "Frank" Ren (talk): Can a simplified AI model predict atmospheric blocking without seeing them before? (link)
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Yuan-Bing Zhao (talk): Faster Eddies in a Warming Climate Lead to Fewer Blocks (link)
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Valentina Castañeda (talk): Storm Swamp: A Key Region for Concurrent Blocking and Heat Wave Events with Quasi-Stationary Rossby Waves Amplification (link)
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Yanjun Hu (talk): On the Role of Baroclinic Annular Mode on Atmospheric Blocking Seeds (link)
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Zhaoyu Liu (poster): On the Local Perspective of Rossby Wave Breaking (link)
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Yuan-Bing Zhao (poster): Investigating the Responses of Rossby Wave Breaking to Circulation Change (link)
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Rivkah Moshe (poster): The Role of Atmospheric Blocking on Driving Wildfires in the Midlatitudes (link)
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Lei Wang (poster): Identifying Atmospheric Blocking Events on Mars and Their Relationship with Large Dust Events (link)
Dec 2025: Our group gave these presentations at the AGU 2025 at New Orleans:
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Lei Wang (talk): Dry Dynamics Matter: the Contributions of Synoptic Eddies to Atmospheric Blocking Events in Observations and Idealized Models (link)
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Zhaoyu Liu (talk): Moisture Matters: Distinct Roles of Diabatic Heating in Atmospheric Blocking in Idealized Models (link)
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Ka Ying Ko (talk): Investigating the Predictability of Atmospheric Blocking in SubC Forecasts (link)
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Yanjun Hu (talk): Does the End of Heatwaves Terminate Atmospheric Blocking Events, or Is It the Other Way Around? (link)
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Zehao Song (talk): Investigating the Baroclinic Annular Mode in the Martian Atmosphere Using the OpenMARS Reanalysis (link)
Dec 2026: Congratulations to Zachary Holder on successful defending his Master of Science degree and become the first graduate of the WCD lab! Zach's thesis is titled "Enhanced Occurrence of Springtime Extreme Precipitation Associated with Mesoscale Convective Systems Over the United States by Baroclinic Annular Mode" and can be found here. Lei served as the primary advisor, with Dr. Dan Chavas serving as a co-advisor.Following his graduation, Zach will return to service with the United States Air Force. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to host him at Purdue and are proud of his accomplishments. We wish him continued success in his future endeavors!
Sep 2025: Lei started to serve as an Associate Editor for Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences and Journal of Climate.
Aug 2025: Please see Purdue EAPS news (link) on Yanjun Hu's NASA FINESST selection.
Aug 2025: Our work on the distinct roles of diabatic heating on atmospheric blocking was highlighted by Purdue Today (link) and also see here for a news report.
Aug 2025: Congratulations to former undergraduate research assistants William Stevens to start the PhD program at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Will Messman to start the PhD program at University of Virginia. Best luck with your future endeavors!
* Note: since our lab started several years ago, seven undergraduate trainees have decided to pursue PhD research careers, including: (1) Valentina Castañeda (2021, now at Purdue University's PhD program); (2) Yuke Zhang (2022, now at Boston University's PhD program); (3) Anh Nhu (2022, now at University of Maryland's PhD program); (4) Will Messman (2023, now at University of Virginia's PhD program) (5) Ken Yan (2024, now at MIT's PhD program); (6) Dean Calhoun (2024, now at University of Maryland's PhD program; NSF GRFP); (7) William Stevens (2024, now at Georgia Institute of Technology's PhD program).
Jul 2025: Lei recently appeared on the BBC's Unexpected Elements talking about the connection between our research on atmospheric blocking and real traffic jams. This analogy was first introduced by Nakamura and Huang in 2018. In a recent paper, we find that lane closures favor traffic jams, and we analyzed the predictability of this problem. Our paper was led by former research assistant Ken Yan (now at MIT) and collaborated with Dr. Edwin Gerber (NYU). See this link for a recording - my portion of the interview is about 24 minutes in.
Jul 2025: Congratulations to our PhD student Yanjun Hu for winning a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Fellowship! Yanjun is the second student in our group who received this prestigious award, and the first one was Zhaoyu Liu’s FINESST selection in 2023.
Jun 2025: Congratulations to our group alumni and former research assistant Dean Calhoun, now a PhD student at University of Maryland, for winning a NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP)!
Jun 2025: Lei became one of the co-leads of the Applications and Operations Metrics working group to build on the input from the S2S Land-Atmosphere Predictability Workshop to evaluate and improve understanding of land–atmosphere coupling processes and their relevance for real-world applications and operations.
May-Jun 2025: A busy summer for our group members to enjoy lots of learning and growing opportunities:
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Valentina was selected to attend and present research at a workshop titled Advancing Understanding of Land-Atmosphere Interactions and Processes on S2S Predictability at Boulder CO.
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Valentina was invited to give a lunchtime seminar at NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and spent a week visiting the lab about our ongoing collaboration.
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Zehao was selected to attend the NSF NCAR CESM tutorial at Boulder CO.
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Ka Ying was selected to attend the Dynamical Core Model Intercomparison Project and Summer School (DCMIP) at Boulder CO.
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Zhaoyu and Yanjun was selected to attend and present research at Stormtracks 2025 workshop at Rosendal Norway. They each delivered an oral presentation.
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Yanjun was selected to attend the Global km-Scale Hackathon (link) at Princeton/GFDL NJ.
Mar 2025: Lei was invited to visit and give a colloquium talk at the University of Illinois Chicago Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences colloquium series.
Jan 2025: Lei was interviewed by NewScientist. Please read this cover-featured story (link) titled "Is a broken jet stream causing extreme weather that lasts longer?"
Jan 2025: Lei joined the Model Diagnostics Task Force by NOAA Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program.
Jan 2025: Lei delivered an invited talk at the 2025 AMS Annual Meeting and his talk was titled "Investigating the Baroclinic Annular Mode and its Predictability of Atmospheric Blocking and Extreme Weather Events in the Midlatitudes."
Jul 2024: Congratulations to Yanjun and Zhaoyu for being selected to participate the 2024 Graduate Climate Conference!
Jun 2024: Congratulations to Ka Ying for being selected to participate the 5th Summer School on Theory, Mechanisms and Hierarchical Modelling of Climate Dynamics at ICTP, and the 2024 Rossbypalooza at U Chicago!
May 2024: See Lei's discussions on heatwaves in this news (link).
Apr 2024: Congratulations to Valentina for being selected to participate the 2024 CESM tutorial!
Mar 2024: Congratulations to Zhaoyu for winning June L. and Tan Sun (“Mark”) Chen Research Scholarship in Atmospheric Science!
Mar 2024: Congratulations to Valentina for winning the Henry Silver Graduate Student Scholarship!
Mar 2024: Congratulations to Valentina for winning an AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA)!
Mar 2024: See a Purdue EAPS report (link) on Valentina's heatwaves paper.
Mar 2024: Welcome William (Computer Science) and Owen (Physics) for joining our lab this summer through Purdue SURF!
Jan 2024: Lei is now a committee member on the Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics (AOFD) Committee, American Meteorological Society. Lei has been serving this committee when he was a PhD student.
Nov 2023: Lei is supported by a Purdue Office of Research Grant for Elevating the Visibility of Research for his blocking article.
July 2023: Congratulations to Zhaoyu for winning a NASA FINESST Fellowship (link)! His proposal was titled "Investigating the Subseasonal to Seasonal Variability Pattern in the Midlatitudes."
Apr 2023: Congratulations to our research assistant Dean on receiving a NOAA William M. Lapenta Internship Program to conduct research at National Weather Service at DC!
Apr 2023: Congratulations to Valentina to be elected as the Vice President of the Purdue Columbian Student Association! The third largest student group at Purdue! Student leadership is important!
Dec 2022: Lei was supported by an AGU Atmospheric Science Caregiver Award.
Aug 2022: Congratulations to Valentina on being awarded a Ross Fellowship.
Feb 2022: Lei was invited to a Colloquium at Purdue University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Nov 2022: Lei was invited to give a talk at University of Michigan's CLaSP Seminar Series.
Aug 2021: Congratulations to Zhaoyu on being awarded a Frederick N. Andrews Fellowship.
Jul 2021: Lei was invited to give a talk at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz Colloquium Series.