AOGS2025

Solar & Terrestrial Science - Distinguished Lecture
Title: Exploring the Geospace-Atmosphere System with LIDAR

Xinzhao CHU

University of Colorado Boulder

Speaker Biography

Xinzhao Chu is a Professor in Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and a Fellow of Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. Dr. Chu is currently focusing on exploring the Earth’s atmosphere, space, and beyond with LIDAR observations, theoretical studies, and numerical modeling. Her research involves the studies of advanced spectroscopy principles and photonics, development of lidar technologies and instrumentation, deployment of lidars all over the world, and investigation of fundamental physical, chemical, and dynamical processes in the Sun-Earth system. Using atmospheric metal species as tracers, her research is exploratory and has led to many science discoveries, especially on the studies of cosmic dust, space-atmosphere interactions, and wave dynamics. Dr. Chu’s ultimate goals are to discover and understand the universal processes that make a planetary atmosphere habitable and sustainable for life as well as to provide innovative lidar solutions to human’s exploration. Her group’s research is multi-disciplinary in nature, covering a wide spectrum from lidar innovations and observations to data analyses, numerical modeling, and atmosphere-space sciences. Dr. Chu is the Principal Investigator on the McMurdo lidar projects that have been observing the Earth’s atmosphere and space for ~14 years in Antarctica. Her group has achieved numerous lidar technology breakthroughs and groundbreaking science discoveries, especially in the Antarctica exploration, for which Dr. Chu was awarded a CEDAR Prize Lecture Award in 2019. Dr. Chu has been providing strong leadership to the research fields for decades. Many of her students have won numerous prizes and awards from various conferences and sources. Such lidar research and science exploration has been a cradle of top PhDs, producing the best crop of young scientists and engineers who are now contributing to cutting-edge research worldwide.

Abstract

Xinzhao Chu along with many collaborators, former and current students and postdocs

Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences & Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

The geospace-atmosphere system separates interplanetary space from the biosphere, protecting life on Earth. However, it is challenging to study because of the challenges in observing the middle-upper atmosphere and near-space environment. With decades of technology innovations and sophisticated observations, lidar is providing powerful and indispensable solutions to such science investigations. This lecture will describe a personal journey of lidar explorations from the North Pole to the South Pole through collaborations with many colleagues and talented students. A centerpiece is the lidar journey in Antarctica that has drawn huge excitement and pathfinding but also frustration.

As a unique window to the geospace-atmosphere system, McMurdo Station is located at high geographic and geomagnetic latitudes by the edge of polar cap and auroral oval. Shifts of the auroral oval driven by solar and geomagnetic activity place McMurdo sometimes within the aurora zone and other times in the polar cap. It is also a gravity-wave hotspot in Antarctica, enabling the discovery of a new class of gravity waves. The ~14 years of lidar observations at McMurdo, run by the University of Colorado Boulder under the support of United States Antarctic Program, have led to numerous eye-opening discoveries with some being transformative to advancing space-atmosphere sciences. This lecture will highlight a few topics to demonstrate how high sensitivity lidar observations, in combination with theoretical studies, numerical modeling, and other detection methods, enable discovery sciences.

Thermosphere-ionosphere metal (TIMt) layers were one of the lidar discoveries from Antarctica, which have shattered the lidar detection ceiling and inspired researchers worldwide to extend lidar measurements deep into the near-space environment. This lecture will offer some thoughts on future directions and international collaborations as well as possible metal signatures of exoplanets that may harbor life.

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Solar & Terrestrial Science - Distinguished Lecture Title: Exploring the Geospace-Atmosphere System with LIDAR

Xinzhao CHU

Speaker Biography

Abstract

Solar & Terrestrial Science - Distinguished Lecture
Title: Exploring the Geospace-Atmosphere System with LIDAR