Recently Dr. George Liu, a professor at the Department of Land Surveying & Geo-Informatics (LSGI) and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, was appointed as a Scientific Advisor by the Director of the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO). Scientific Advisors are expected to help the HKO maintain an active link with the scientific community, advise HKO on long-term scientific and technical development strategies, and provide guidance on research studies and operational applications in specific scientific disciplines.
As the Government Department responsible for monitoring and forecasting weather as well as issuing warnings on weather-related hazards in Hong Kong, HKO has contributed significantly to the meteorological services in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area, and the Mainland China. The HKO is well recognized internationally for its professional work and plays an important role in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Over the past decade, Dr. Liu has developed a close collaboration with the HKO and made significant contribution to the meteorological research in Hong Kong and internationally. Dr. Liu and HKO scientists successfully collaborated in six General Research Fund projects funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and jointly published a number of peer-reviewed papers. Currently, Dr. Liu is collaborating with HKO scientists on transforming the Micro-LARGE Lab research outcomes to HKO’s daily weather forecasting work, aiming to enhance HKO’s Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) performance.
In the past many years, Dr. Liu and his students at the Micro-Laboratory of Atmospheric Research and Geomatics Engineering (Micro-LARGE) have dedicated to atmosphere observation and modeling using both satellite-based sensors and ground-based in-situ instruments. The advanced algorithms developed at the Micro-LARGE Lab have remarkably improved the observation accuracy of global water vapor from many different satellites – the largest greenhouse gas and an atmospheric constituent playing a critical role in weather change and climate monitoring. Arguably the accuracy of satellite water vapor data produced by the Micro-LARGE represents the world’s highest level of its kind. The sheer amount of high accuracy global water vapor data from different satellites is expected to significantly contribute to global NWP, climate change, hydrology, and many other applications.
In addition, Dr. Liu is also Life Member and an Executive Committee member of the Hong Kong Meteorological Society.