Xia Zhang
About
I am a postdoctoral research fellow of the Industrial Ecology Programme at NTNU, working with Prof. Francesco Cherubini. My main research interests includes climate change, regional climate modeling, land use/cover change, drought, and extreme events.
My research focus and expertise:
1) Agricultural land management
Sustainable agricultural land management has the potential to align global mitigation objectives with local climate and environmental co-benefits. Land-atmosphere coupled models (e.g., WRF, CESM) are used to simulate the climate effects of agricultural land use/cover changes (e.g., replacing annual crops with perennial bioenergy crops, replacing bare soil with cover crops, and incorporating trees on farms), by integrating both biogeophysical (e.g., temperature, albedo, latent heat, and surface roughness) and biogeochemical (e.g., carbon sequestration) processes. The research also emphasizes the mechanisms behind the temperature changes and land availability.
2) Drought detection, forecasting, and attribution
A drought index based on the difference between actual evapotranspiration and potential evapotranspiration has been developed. The global dataset of the drought index at a daily scale has been publicly shared. The drought detection and forecasting have been conducted at regional to global scales, with comparisons against commonly used indicators. The potential applications are in agricultural drought monitoring and early warning due to direct connection between climate and ecosystem by deficit of evapotranspiration. Extreme hot and dry concurrent events are detected and attributed, along with the associated forest fire risks.
3) Improved representation of land-atmosphere coupling in climate models
To enhance land-atmosphere interaction representations in numerical models, a dynamic canopy-height-dependent coupling scheme is applied in an offline Noah-MP/HRLDAS land surface model. This scheme demonstrates improvements in surface flux simulations through single-point experiments at nine flux tower sites and long-term regional experiments, particularly for short vegetation (e.g., grass, crops, and shrubs). The dynamic coupling scheme has also been incorporated into the coupled WRF-NoahMP models, resulting in improved simulations of climatic precipitation variations and heavy precipitation events, through 13-km resolution climate modeling and 3-km resolution convective-permitting modeling.
Publications
2025
-
Li, Yan;
Huang, Bo;
Tan, Chunping;
Zhang, Xia;
Cherubini, Francesco;
Rust, Henning W..
(2025)
Investigating the global and regional response of drought to idealized deforestation using multiple global climate models.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS)
Academic article
2024
-
Huang, Bo;
Li, Yan;
Zhang, Xia;
Tan, Chunping;
Hu, Xiangping;
Cherubini, Francesco.
(2024)
Regional temperature response to different forest development stages in Fennoscandia explored with a regional climate model.
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Academic article
-
Zhang, Xia;
Huang, Bo;
Rinke Dias de Souza, Nariê;
Hu, Xiangping;
Cherubini, Francesco.
(2024)
Regional cooling potential from expansion of perennial grasses in Europe.
Communications Earth & Environment
Academic article
2023
-
Zhang, Xia;
Duan, Jianping;
Cherubini, Francesco;
Ma, Zhuguo.
(2023)
A global daily evapotranspiration deficit index dataset for quantifying drought severity from 1979 to 2022.
Scientific Data
Academic article
2022
-
Zhang, Xia;
Chen, Liang;
Ma, Zhuguo;
Zheng, Ziyan;
Meng, Yanan.
(2022)
Sensitivity of Heavy Convective Precipitation Simulations to Changes in Land-Atmosphere Exchange Processes Over China.
Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR): Atmospheres
Academic article
Journal publications
-
Li, Yan;
Huang, Bo;
Tan, Chunping;
Zhang, Xia;
Cherubini, Francesco;
Rust, Henning W..
(2025)
Investigating the global and regional response of drought to idealized deforestation using multiple global climate models.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS)
Academic article
-
Huang, Bo;
Li, Yan;
Zhang, Xia;
Tan, Chunping;
Hu, Xiangping;
Cherubini, Francesco.
(2024)
Regional temperature response to different forest development stages in Fennoscandia explored with a regional climate model.
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Academic article
-
Zhang, Xia;
Huang, Bo;
Rinke Dias de Souza, Nariê;
Hu, Xiangping;
Cherubini, Francesco.
(2024)
Regional cooling potential from expansion of perennial grasses in Europe.
Communications Earth & Environment
Academic article
-
Zhang, Xia;
Duan, Jianping;
Cherubini, Francesco;
Ma, Zhuguo.
(2023)
A global daily evapotranspiration deficit index dataset for quantifying drought severity from 1979 to 2022.
Scientific Data
Academic article
-
Zhang, Xia;
Chen, Liang;
Ma, Zhuguo;
Zheng, Ziyan;
Meng, Yanan.
(2022)
Sensitivity of Heavy Convective Precipitation Simulations to Changes in Land-Atmosphere Exchange Processes Over China.
Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR): Atmospheres
Academic article
Outreach
2024
-
LectureHuang, Bo; Li, Yan; Zhang, Xia; Tan, Chunping; Hu, Xiangping; Cherubini, Francesco. (2024) Investigating forest management's impact on local climate in Fennoscandia through statistical and dynamical modeling. European Geosciences Union (EGU) EGU2024 , Vienna 2024-04-13 - 2024-04-19
-
Academic lectureZhang, Xia; Duan, Jianping; Cherubini, Francesco; Ma, Zhuguo. (2024) A daily evapotranspiration-based drought indicator in characterizing spatiotemporal evolution of flash droughts. European Geosciences Union (EGU) EGU24 2024-04-14 - 2024-04-19
2023
-
PosterZhang, Xia; Chen, Liang; Ma, Zhuguo. (2023) Improvement of land-atmosphere exchange coefficient parameterization in regional numerical simulations. The International Conference on Regional Climate-CORDEX 2023 (ICRC-CORDEX 2023) 2023-09-25 - 2023-09-29
-
LectureZhang, Xia; Chen, Liang; Ma, Zhuguo. (2023) Improvement of surface exchange coefficient parameterization and its application to regional numerical simulation. European Geosciences Union (EGU) EGU2023 , Vienna, Austria 2023-04-23 - 2023-04-28