S. Zilitinkevich Award 2024 for Aijun Ding

Professor Aijun Ding of the School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, China, has been selected to receive the S. Zilitinkevich Memorial Award 2024

Aijun Ding has made extraordinary contributions to the understanding of the aerosol-planetary boundary layer (PBL) interaction and its application in air pollution control, chemical weather forecast, and mitigation of climate extremes. His seminal contribution to the community is the process-based mechanism understanding of aerosol – planetary boundary layer – weather interactions by linking in-situ measurements and model simulations. Aijun Ding studied air pollution and PBL meteorology based on measurements taken at a flagship station he founded – the Station for Observing Regional Processes of the Earth System (SORPES) – in Nanjing, eastern China, and then extended this topic to the city cluster areas throughout eastern China, i.e. the so-called Gigacity area by coordinating several large-scale intensive field campaigns using platforms such as airships, aircraft and ground-based stations etc. He has identified the critical role of black carbon in suppressing PBL height, thereby worsening air quality in megacities, enhancing pollution transport between city clusters, and even intensifying wildfires under typical climate regimes around the globe. Aijun Ding has published over 230 peer-reviewed papers in international journals, including Science, Nature Geoscience, and Nature Communications, etc., with more than 20,200 citations and an h-index of 74 (Google scholar). He has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Web of Science since 2020.

The award will be handed over to Aijun Ding during the EMS Annual Meeting in Session UP1.2 Atmospheric boundary-layer processes, turbulence and land-atmosphere interactions followed by the award lecture.

Award Lecture:
“Interactions of Atmospheric Chemistry and Atmospheric Boundary Layer: From Megacity to Gigacity”

Aijun Ding: “It is a great honor and pleasure to receive the Zilitinkevich Memorial Award. Prof. Sergej Zilitinkevich was one of the great figures in the field of planetary boundary layer meteorology. I cherish and miss the collaboration with Prof. Zilitinkevich on several articles on the interactions of air pollution and boundary layer meteorology in China’s megacities, during which I learned a lot from him. I am honored to receive this award in his name.”