Dr. Chenning Tong has been awarded a major collaborative NSF grant with a budget of $2.2M ($1.2M for his group) to study the atmospheric boundary layer. The (unsolicited) NSF project is based on the theory of the atmospheric boundary layer that he proposed in 2015, and developed and tested in the past six years. The new theory overcomes the major shortcomings of the prevailing theory developed in 1954, and is a major advance in the research area. He gave a plenary talk on it at the Symposium for Boundary Layers and Turbulence in 2018. He is now leading the new NSF project to continue the theoretical development and to conduct extensive field measurements in California to comprehensively test and calibrate the theory. The research will have a strong impact on many important atmospheric and environmental applications, such as wind energy, transport of particulates, weather forecast, pollutant formation, dispersion, and destruction.
