About

Professor Xinzhao Chu explores advanced spectroscopy principles, develops new lidar technologies, and studies the fundamental physical and chemical processes that govern the structure and dynamics of the whole atmosphere. She is a Fellow of CIRES funded by CU and NOAA, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. Her research involves the development and application of lidar remote sensing technology to investigate atmospheric phenomena, including the structure and dynamics of the atmosphere, with a focus on polar regions and space weather. She teaches graduate classes on spectroscopy and lidar remote sensing, as well as undergraduate courses in electronics, communications, thermodynamics, and heat transfer.

Research topics

• Atmospheric sciences
• Physics
• Geophysics
• Geometry
• Optics
• Materials science
• Meteorology
• Mathematics
• Environmental science
• Geology

Selected publications

• First Simultaneous Lidar Observations of Thermosphere‐Ionosphere Fe and Na (TIFe and TINa) Layers at McMurdo (77.84°S, 166.67°E), Antarctica With Concurrent Measurements of Aurora Activity, Enhanced Ionization Layers, and Converging Electric Field

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2020 · 49 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Materials science
  • Atmospheric sciences
  • Geophysics

  neutralization. However, the tenuous TINa layers persist long beyond TIFe disappearance and reveal gravity wave perturbations, suggesting a dynamic background of neutral Na, but not Fe, above 110 km. The striking differences between distinct TIFe and diffuse TINa suggest differential transport between Fe and Na, possibly due to mass separation.

  DOI

• NRLMSIS 2.0: A Whole‐Atmosphere Empirical Model of Temperature and Neutral Species Densities

  Earth and Space Science · 2020 · 435 citations

  • Atmospheric sciences
  • Environmental science
  • Physics

  Abstract NRLMSIS® 2.0 is an empirical atmospheric model that extends from the ground to the exobase and describes the average observed behavior of temperature, eight species densities, and mass density via a parametric analytic formulation. The model inputs are location, day of year, time of day, solar activity, and geomagnetic activity. NRLMSIS 2.0 is a major, reformulated upgrade of the previous version, NRLMSISE‐00. The model now couples thermospheric species densities to the entire column, via an effective mass profile that transitions each species from the fully mixed region below ~70 km altitude to the diffusively separated region above ~200 km. Other changes include the extension of atomic oxygen down to 50 km and the use of geopotential height as the internal vertical coordinate. We assimilated extensive new lower and middle atmosphere temperature, O, and H data, along with global average thermospheric mass density derived from satellite orbits, and we validated the model against independent samples of these data. In the mesosphere and below, residual biases and standard deviations are considerably lower than NRLMSISE‐00. The new model is warmer in the upper troposphere and cooler in the stratosphere and mesosphere. In the thermosphere, N 2 and O densities are lower in NRLMSIS 2.0; otherwise, the NRLMSISE‐00 thermosphere is largely retained. Future advances in thermospheric specification will likely require new in situ mass spectrometer measurements, new techniques for species density measurement between 100 and 200 km, and the reconciliation of systematic biases among thermospheric temperature and composition data sets, including biases attributable to long‐term changes.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Lidar Investigation of Middle Atmosphere Temperature, Composition, Chemistry, and Dynamics at McMurdo, Antarctica

  NSF · $1.2M · 2009–2013

• CEDAR: Simultaneous Fe and Na Doppler Lidar Measurements of Heat and Constituent Fluxes in the Mesopause Region and Neutral Metal Layers, Winds and Temperatures in the Thermosphere

  NSF · $500k · 2015–2022

• CEDAR: Observational and Modeling Studies of Thermosphere-Ionosphere Metal (TIMt) Layers over Boulder

  NSF · $600k · 2023–2026

• CAREER: Understanding the Global MLT Thermal Structure and Dynamics from Lidar and Satellite Observations and GCM Simulations

  NSF · $569k · 2007–2013

• Collaborative Research: CEDAR: Daytime Potassium Doppler Lidar at Arecibo

  NSF · $52k · 2006–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Xian Lu

  Clemson University

  84 shared

• Zhibin Yu

  Harbin Institute of Technology

  73 shared

• W. Fong

  Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

  66 shared

• Cao Chen

  65 shared

• Chester S. Gardner

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  58 shared

• Brendan R. Roberts

  University of Colorado Boulder

  42 shared

• John A. Smith

  38 shared

• Wentao Huang

  Guangzhou Vocational College of Science and Technology

  37 shared

Labs

• Xinzhao Chu groupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Physics and Electrical Engineering

  Peking University

  1996

• B.S., Physics and Electrical Engineering

  Peking University

  1991

Awards & honors

• CEDAR Prize Lecture Award (2019)
• Provost's Faculty Achievement Award (2013)
• Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Award, National Science…
• Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, National Sc…
• Antarctica Service Medal of the United States of America, Na…

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