WACCEM Team

Principal Investigator: L. Ruby Leung

Dr. L. Ruby Leung is a Battelle Fellow at PNNL and the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). Her research broadly cuts across multiple areas in modeling and analysis of climate and water cycle including orographic precipitation, monsoon climate, extreme events, land surface processes, land-atmosphere interactions, and aerosol-cloud interactions. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and Washington State Academy of Sciences and the recipient of the AGU Global Environmental Change Bert Bolin Award and Lecture in 2019, the AGU Atmospheric Science Jacob Bjerknes Lecture in 2020, and the AMS Hydrologic Sciences Medal in 2022. She was awarded the DOE Distinguished Scientist Fellow in 2021. She is a member of the science steering group of the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) and an executive member of the science steering committee of U.S. CLIVAR.

Research Element Leads:

Jian Lu, Large-Scale Circulation Lead

Dr. Jian Lu is a staff scientist in Atmospheric, Climate & Earth Sciences Division at PNNL. His research focuses on large-scale dynamical processes in the atmosphere and ocean and how their interaction may determine the path of future climate. Jian Lu is an editor of Journal of Climate.

Zhe Feng, Mesoscale Convection Lead

Dr. Zhe Feng is an Earth scientist in Atmospheric, Climate & Earth Sciences Division at PNNL. His research focuses on understanding the physical processes of organized convective storms and the impact of climate change to extreme weather. Zhe Feng is the lead developer of the atmospheric feature tracking software package PyFLEXTRKR and the U.S. and global MCS tracking datasets. He is serving as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmosphere.

Samson Hagos, Surface-Atmosphere Interactions Lead

Dr. Samson Hagos is a staff scientist in Atmospheric, Climate & Earth Sciences Division and the sub-sector manager for DOE's Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) and Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling (EESM) programs at PNNL. His research interests include water cycle processes, variability and predictability over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales, from the life cycle of convection to multi-decadal variations of monsoon systems. Samson Hagos is a member of Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Monsoon Panel.