Mission and Goals – Advancing Air Quality, Food Security and Human Health under Global Climate Change

Mission and Goals

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Mission

To develop world-leading multidisciplinary climate and environmental research to improve human lives in East Asia and beyond;
To promote international visibility and recognition of climate, environmental and public health research of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) through extramural collaboration;
To encourage research vitality and sustainability of CUHK climate and environmental scholars by jointly competing for external research grants and building up a stronger track record; and
To translate scientific results into policy recommendations for better management of air quality, agricultural production and nutritional health under global climate change.

Goals

Climate Change and Weather Dynamics

To investigate the role of climate change in modulating the behavior of atmospheric circulation systems on time scales ranging from days to decades;
To identify dynamical processes contributing to the incidence of extreme weather events such as heat waves and tropical cyclones, with particular emphasis on severe phenomena occurring over East Asia; and
To diagnose the interactions between atmospheric variability and perturbations in other components of the Earth System under different climate change scenarios.

Food Security and Ecosystem Health

To create a mechanistic Earth system model that fully accounts for responses of agroecosystems to climate change, including the effects of land use, air pollution and possible feedbacks;
To establish a set of empirical and big-data derived models that characterize relationships between different components of the climate-agriculture system and inform decision making;
To identify key factors that will shape future air quality, agricultural production and nutritional health of various populations under global climate change; and
To develop an integrated decision-making tool for policymakers and other stakeholders to formulate optimal strategies that sustain crop production and population nutritional health with minimal environmental impacts under global climate change.

Air Pollution and Human Health

To establish a set of empirical and big-data derived models that characterize relationships between different components of the climate-agriculture system and inform decision making;
To evaluate air quality and health impacts of historical and projected emissions;
To understand the sensitivity of pollutants to emissions, climate and atmospheric composition; and
To quantify climate and air quality impacts in HK/PRD under various land use scenarios.