Yi Zhang 张祎

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909 Warren Weaver Hall

New York, NY 10012

I am an Assistant Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. I am affiliated with the Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science within Courant. I was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 2021 to 2023, hosted by William Boos. I earned my PhD from Princeton University in 2021, advised by Stephan Fueglistaler.

Full of uncertainty and disorder, the Earth’s climate system is a unique subject in complex systems science. Reducing complex phenomena to simple laws is fascinating to me as a scientist. I am interested in atmospheric dynamics and the interaction between dynamics, thermodynamics, and radiative transfer.

I particularly appreciate the insights that analytical theories provide, whether they are predictive or diagnostic. Achieving quantitative agreement with simple theories can be challenging in our complex climate system, but I strive to incorporate analytical components in each piece of my research.

news

Mar 23, 2026 A recent preprint has raised questions about Zhang and Boos (2023), specifically the inclusion of the saturation specific humidity term at the 500-hPa level. Here, I clarify the rationale behind this formulation: A Clarification of the Derivation in Zhang and Boos (2023)
Mar 7, 2025 Our model in Zhang et al. (2024) successfully predicted the record-breaking 2024 tropical extreme wet-bulb temperatures, as detailed in Forecast.
Dec 9, 2024 A new paper led by Heng Quan, third-year graduate student of Princeton University, is published in Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. In this paper, Heng made a convincing case for weaker horizontal temperature gradients in a warmer climate, extending our fundamental understanding for tropical atmospheric dynamics that is based on the weak-temperature-gradient approximation.
Nov 5, 2024 A new perspective piece led by Dr. Mike Byrne from the University of St Andrews, discussing the use of theory and idealized modeling to advance land-climate science, has been published. Read the article here.
Apr 14, 2024 Our paper, detailing a physics-based statistical model for the annual maximum wet-bulb temperature (TWmax) in the tropics, is out. See TWmax predictions for 2024 based on the methodology under the “forecast” tab.