Dr. Hua Lu - Profile
Contact Dr. Hua Lu
+44 (0)1223 221400
Biography
Originally from south-west of China, my favourite activities were swimming in the Aha Lake and wandering miles and miles in the mountainous countryside. Trained as a mathematician, but I was seduced early by Mother Nature’s beauty and turned my focus onto environment research.
Moved to Australia in 1993, I studied my PhD in applied mathematics at the University of New South Wales during 1996-2000. After I completed my PhD, I was employed at the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organisation (Land and Water Division) in Canberra, as a postDoc and subsequently as a research scientist. In 2003, I relocated to Cambridge with my family in order to escape from the bush fires and to enjoy the smell of green grass at the Backs. I was a senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge in 2003 and 2004. I then joined BAS as a research scientist in 2005.
I have mostly worked on environmental issues including wind erosion and dust transport, sediment transport within river basins, and solar influences on Earth’s climate variability. Climate is at the core of all the research issues I have encountered so far. It is the most exciting environmental science because the system is apparently simple but rather complex, so natural but deeply mysterious. It changes constantly and one can hardly have a thorough grasp of its shape.
My recent research interest is on the identification of multiple solar influences and pathways in the climate records, studying non-linear amplification of solar signals and understanding dynamic interactions between external forcing and atmospheric internal variability from a perspective of whole atmospheric vertical coupling.
My overall research interests include:
Climate Change and Impact
Sun-climate connection: detecting multiple solar signals in the atmospheric data and understanding how solar response at the upper atmosphere affects weather and climate at the layers closer to the Earth's surface;
Aeolian dust transport and its impact on climate change;
Land-air interactions amongst climate, soil, vegetation, topography, hydrology, particulate transport, etc.
Mathematical Modelling
Develop, adapt and test computer simulation models for soil erosion by water and wind;
Study dust (by air) and sediment (by water) source generation, transport and deposition from plot to catchment then to continental scales;
Quantify complex environmental problems using complex systems theories, multidisciplinary knowledge, integrated approaches, spatially distributed climate, terrain, soil and vegetation data, remote sensing and GIS.
Operations Research
Applications in environmental impact and risk assessment, especially water quality and water availability;
Spatial optimization for land use allocation and best management practices (BMPs) placement for water quality control.
I am a firm believer that interdisciplinary study and collaboration are the most effective ways to carry out research.
