Xinyi Huang

Profile

I am a third-year PhD student in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Aerosol group in the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science (ICAS), funded by the SENSE CDT – Centre for Satellite Data in Environmental Science. In October 2022, I started my PhD entitled “Using perturbed parameter ensemble to explore the behaviour of mixed-phase cold air outbreak clouds”, which is supervised by Professor Ken Carslaw, Professor Ben Murray, Dr Daniel Grosvenor and Dr Floortje Van Den Heuvel. 

Mixed-phase cold-air outbreak (CAO) clouds are important for estimating the cloud-phase feedback under the warming climate, hence a good representation of these clouds in the model is vital for our prediction of future climate change. However, how these clouds change in the future remains uncertain with cloud microphysics being one of the major sources of uncertainties. In this project, we are using perturbed parameter ensembles (PPE), Gaussian Process (GP) emulators and global sensitivity analysis to quantify the uncertain cloud microphysics parameters to the radiative properties of mixed-phase CAO clouds.

My interest in atmospheric science stemmed from my undergraduate research project when I was studying chemistry at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). My undergraduate research was supervised by Dr Mark Holden, exploring how solutes and pH affect heterogeneous ice nucleation of K-feldspar using the droplet freezing technique. In pursuit of further knowledge in atmospheric science, I did a Master of Research (MRes) in Climate and Atmospheric Science at the University of Leeds. My MRes research project was about the importance of high-latitude sources for ice-nucleating particles (INPs) in cold-air outbreaks (CAOs) and the implications for cloud-phase feedback, supervised by Professor Ken Carslaw and Professor Ben Murray. This project involved using reanalysis data for identifying CAO days over the North Atlantic, backward simulations with FLEXPART (FLEXible PARTicle dispersion model) for determining potential source regions of INPs, UKESM (The UK Earth System Modelling) simulation for analysing dust and INP concentrations, and satellite observations for studying shallow mixed-phase cloud properties.

Research interests

• Ice Formation in Clouds
• Ice-Nucleating Particles (INPs)
• Cloud-Phase Feedback
• Satellite Remote Sensing

Qualifications

• MRes Climate and Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds
• BSc (Hons.) Chemistry, University of Central Lancashire