Biography

Yang, an assistant professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, specializes in the physics of atmosphere and climate. Yang completed his Ph.D. in environmental science and engineering from the California Institute of Technology and was a Miller Research Fellow at UC Berkeley before joining the faculty at UC Davis in 2017. 

Research interests

Climate dynamics, tropical atmospheric dynamics, clouds and convection

Brief overview

I work to help develop a unified understanding of how the tropical atmosphere works. Understanding moist convection—cumulus clouds and thunderstorms—is the key to clarifying the physics of tropical atmosphere. Moist convection dominates vertical energy transport in the lower atmosphere, and its interaction with atmospheric circulations forms the basis of a spectrum of atmospheric phenomena across wide temporal-spatial scales. 

I am looking at several questions to help advance our understanding of convection on multiple scales, including how do mesoscale cloud systems cluster together? What sets the propagation speed of synoptic scale tropical waves? On the planetary scale, I am exploring the Madden-Julian oscillation, the largest element in the variability of tropical atmosphere.

Current projects

• Researching the Madden-Julian oscillation
• Understanding Hadley circulation and the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ)
• Exploring convective self-aggregation

Last updated September 2018