Zhen Qu

Bio

Zhen uses geospatial analytics to investigate how human activities are altering atmospheric composition and chemistry, and how these changes interact with climate change. She utilizes statistics, high-performance computing and satellite observations to investigate the sources, chemical formation, spatial distributions and trends of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. She develops algorithms and modeling approaches to expand our process-level understanding of man-made and natural emissions. She also applies atmospheric chemistry models to understand the sensitivity of air pollution and its exposure to the emissions of precursor gases.

Publications

• Assessing the relative impacts of satellite ozone and its precursor observations to improve global tropospheric ozone analysis using multiple chemical reanalysis systems , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2025)
• High-resolution US methane emissions inferred from an inversion of 2019 TROPOMI satellite data: contributions from individual states, urban areas, and landfills , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2024)
• Inverse modeling of 2010-2022 satellite observations shows that inundation of the wet tropics drove the 2020-2022 methane surge , PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (2024)
• Particulate matter from wildfire smoke in northern Colorado appears to be associated with conjunctivitis in dogs , JAVMA-JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (2024)
• East Asian methane emissions inferred from high-resolution inversions of GOSAT and TROPOMI observations: a comparative and evaluative analysis , ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (2023)
• Observation-derived 2010-2019 trends in methane emissions and intensities from US oil and fields tied to metrics , PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (2023)
• Attribution of the 2020 surge in atmospheric methane by inverse analysis of GOSAT observations , Environmental Research Letters (2022)
• Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI 1.0): a user-friendly, cloud-based facility for inferring high-resolution methane emissions from TROPOMI satellite observations , Geoscientific Model Development (2022)
• Methane emissions from China: a high-resolution inversion of TROPOMI satellite observations , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)
• Methane emissions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico: evaluation of national methane emission inventories and 2010–2017 sectoral trends by inverse analysis of in situ (GLOBALVIEWplus CH<sub>4</sub> ObsPack) and satellite (GOSAT) atmospheric observations , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2022)