Title: Reducing Aerosol-Climate Uncertainty Through Multiscale Microphysical Modeling
Lecturer: Dr. Xiaohan Li（University of Chicago）
Inviter: Professor Lili Lei
Time: Thursday January 8, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Venue: Lecture Hall D103, School of Atmospheric Sciences
Abstract: Aerosols exert a climatic influence comparable to that of greenhouse gases, yetthey remain the largest source of uncertainty in current climate projections. This uncertainty arises from the challenge of resolving the complex physical and chemical processes governing aerosols across wide spatial and temporal scales. This presentation introduces a multiscale framework developed to reduce these uncertainties through integrated advances in molecular-scale processes, process-level aerosol-cloud interactions, and global climate modeling. We present results from nanoscale moleculaldynamics simulations as a promising tool to complement laboratory measurements ofnew particle formation, highlight the emerging need to reconsider the roles of soot andorganic aerosols as ice-nucleating particles in aerosol-cloud interactions, and introduce a newly developed aerosol microphysics model, GLAMM, for improved aerosol representation in climate models. Together, this cross-scale integration provides a physically consistent pathway to reducing uncertainties in aerosol radiative forcing and aerosol-climate feedbacks
Brief introduction to the speaker: Xiaohan Li is a Staff Scientist at the University of Chicago. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). She received her Ph.D, from Princeton University in 2023 and her B.S. from Peking University in 2018. Her research focuses on atmospheric aerosol microphysics and on developing cross-scale frameworks spanning molecular to global scales to achieve an integrated understanding of aerosol processes and their global impacts. She has been honored with the American Chemica Society C. Ellen Gonter Award (2024), CIMES Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023), and the Walbridge Fund Graduate Award (2021).