Qian Wu

Dr. Qian Wu is a Project Scientist IV at the High Altitude Observatory at NCAR. He specializes in observations of mesospheric and thermospheric winds from balloon-borne, space-borne, and ground based Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) to study gravity waves and tides.

He is the PI for the NASA high altitude balloon FPI project called HIWIND, which is the first balloon-borne instrument for thermospheric wind measurements. HIWIND had very successful flights in June 2011, 2018 and obtained critically needed daytime thermospheric winds. The results from HIWIND have changed our view of the high latitude thermosphere circulation. He will fly the HIWIND again in New Zealand in coming years with support from NASA.

He also operates ground based FPI from the Arctic to Antarctica to measure mesospheric and thermospheric winds and study upper atmospheric dynamics. He is also a PI for FPI projects to deploy instruments in Africa.

Qian Wu also is the PI for the NASA project to develop a new lower boundary condition for the NCAR-HAO Thermospheric Ionosphere Electrodynamic General Circulation Model (TIEGCM). TIEGCM is a community model which is widely used by researchers around the world. The new lower boundary condition is based on TIMED satellite observations of the lower thermosphere migrating and nonmigrating tide variations. The new lower boundary condition provides more realistic forcing of the tides from the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. New study by Yamazaki et al. [2013] has shown great improvement of the TIEGCM simulation of the ionospheric current due to tides.