We are pleased to announce that Mr Yangzhao GONG, a PhD student at the Micro-Laboratory of Atmospheric Research and Geomatics Engineering (Micro-LARGE) led by Prof. George LIU, Associate Head (Partnership) & Professor of LSGI at PolyU, has been selected as the recipient of the “Zhu Kezhen” prize awarded by the Hong Kong Meteorological Society (HKMetS) in 2023. This prize recognises Mr Gong's outstanding work on assimilating satellite-based all-sky Near Infrared (NIR) Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) data into Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. Notably, Mr. Gong is the third winner of the "Zhu Kezhen" prize from Prof. Liu's Micro-LARGE team.
The assimilation of near-infrared water vapor data has long posed challenges due to the absence of an effective radiative transfer model for NIR radiance data assimilation. Additionally, effectively assimilating cloud-affected NIR water vapor data, which cannot penetrate clouds, is another critical problem. Mr. Gong and his supervisor Prof. Liu, in collaboration with two scientists from the Hong Kong Observatory, have become the first team in the world to successfully assimilate satellite-based NIR all-sky PWV data into NWP models. Their groundbreaking work has significantly advanced NWP performance in the global meteorological community. In particular, assimilating all-sky PWV data from Sentinel-3 satellites has improved rainfall forecast skill scores by 2.4%. In contrast, clear-sky PWV data assimilation only yields a 1.0% improvement. Furthermore, assimilating all-sky PWV data has substantially corrected the humidity forecast bias in NWP models, resulting in improved rainfall spatial patterns.
The "Zhu Kezhen" prize is a prestigious award established by HKMetS, granted to no more than one outstanding paper in the field of meteorology each year. The prize-winning paper for 2023, titled "Assimilating Sentinel‐3 All‐Sky PWV Retrievals to Improve the WRF Forecasting Performance Over the South China," was published in the American Geophysical Union (AGU)'s "Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres" in 2023.This work received financial support from both the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) and the Emerging Frontier Area (EFA) scheme of the Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development (RISUD) at PolyU. Given the context of global warming and the anticipated increase in extreme weather events, assimilating satellite-based NIR all-sky PWV data will undoubtedly benefit the global community by enhancing NWP accuracy and reliability.
Congratulations to Mr. Gong and his supervisor Prof. Liu on this remarkable achievement!
