Atmospheric Science

College of Engineering and Physical Sciences

Hunter Brown, PhD Student

Room 60XX, Engineering Building
email: hbrown18@uwyo.edu

Advisor:

Dr. Zachary Lebo

Research Topic:

My research focuses on improving global climate model representation of biomass burning aerosols and their various climate impacts. My work addresses aerosol composition, microphysical treatment, atmospheric processing, and snow albedo feedbacks. The following topics are investigated using the NCAR Community Earth System Model (CESM):

• Implementation of absorbing organic aerosol (i.e., brown carbon) to model biomass and biofuel emissions.

• Identification of an overestimation in aerosol absorption by BB aerosols compared to observations. Further work includes improvements to this overestimation and analysis of the effect on aerosol climate effects.

• Implementation of brown carbon aerosol deposition on snow and quantification of brown carbon snow darkening effect. Regional contributions are also analyzed with the development of tagging capabilities for carbonaceous aerosols in CESM.

Education:

• B.S., Environmental Science, University of Alaska Southeast, 2015

• M.S., Atmospheric Science, University of Wyoming, 2017

Publications:

• Brown, Hunter, Xiaohong Liu, Yan Feng, Yiquan Jiang, Shane Murphy, Rudra Pokhrel, Mingxuan Wu, Zheng Lu, and Chenglai Wu. Radiative Forcing and Climate Impacts of Brown Carbon with the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2018.

• Rahimi, Stefan, Cheglai Wu, Xiaohong Liu, Hunter Brown. Exploring a variable-resolution approach for simulating regional climate over the Tibetan Plateau using VR-CESM. JGR Atmospheres, 2019

• Rahimi, Stefan, Xiaohong Liu, Chenglai Wu, William K. Lau, Hunter Brown, Mingxuan Wu, and Yun Qian. Quantifying snow darkening and atmospheric radiative effects of black carbon and dust on the South Asian monsoon and hydrological cycle: experiments using variable-resolution CESM. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2019.

• Chen, Bing, C. Wu, X. Liu, L. Chen, Jian Wu, H. Yang, Tao Luo, Xue Wu, Yiquan Jiang, Lei Jiang, H. Y. Brown, Z. Lu, W. Fan, G. Lin, Bo Sun, M. Wu. Seasonal climatic effects and feedbacks of anthropogenic heat release due to global energy consumption with CAM5. Climate Dynamics, 2018.

• Wang, Liping, Xiaohong Liu, and Hunter Brown. “Prediction of the Impacts of Climate Change on Energy Consumption for a Medium-Size Office Building with Two Climate Models.” Energy and Buildings, 2017.

• Wu, Chenglai, Zhaohui Lin, Juanxiong He, Minghua Zhang, Xiaohong Liu, Renjian Zhang, and Hunter Brown. “A Process-Oriented Evaluation of Dust Emission Parameterizations in CESM: Simulation of a Typical Severe Dust Storm in East Asia” Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 8, no. 3, 1432–52, 2016

Conference Presentations:

• Brown, H. Y. et al. Incorporation of Brown Carbon into the CESM1 CAM5.4 and Model Comparison to Laboratory Optical Measurements (poster). AMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, January 2017.

• Brown, H. Y. et al. Improvement of Biomass Burning Optical Properties in CAM5.4 and Comparison of AeroCom Model biomass Burning Optical Properties to Observations (poster). AEROCOM Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., October 2018.

• Brown, H. Y. Brown Carbon in CAM: Validation and Climate Effect (talk). CESM Chemistry Climate Working Group Meeting, Boulder, CO, February 2018.