Dr. Jun Wang’s exceptional record of scholarship and service within the AGU community epitomizes the qualities recognized by the Joanne Simpson Medal. Since earning his Ph.D. in 2005, he has made groundbreaking contributions to advance satellite algorithm physics for studying fires and aerosols. He is a pioneer in satellite remote sensing of surface particulate matter air quality. His work using backscattered moonlight for mapping aerosol optical depth at night from space is seminal. His innovative algorithms for passive sensing of aerosol layer height and fire combustion efficiency, currently in use by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to generate new satellite data products, are having transformative impacts on such research areas as monitoring and predictions of fire emissions and long-range three-dimensional transport of aerosols at both day and night. Jun has leveraged satellite data to advance the modeling and understanding of the health impacts of atmospheric composition and air quality. His development of radiance data assimilation techniques for constraining aerosol emissions and modeling soil NOx emissions at high temperatures has improved the scientific understanding of surface ozone air quality, particularly in rural areas with a warming climate. Equally illuminating is his work related to the upper troposphere and stratosphere (UTS), including revealing the importance of warming in UTS by smoke particles from pyrocumulonimbus clouds and the explanation of the mystery of observed gaseous ammonia in UTS. Jun’s scholarly productivity and originality are reflected in his 209 peer-reviewed papers; 63 are in AGU journals, highlighting his active contribution to the AGU community's body of knowledge. His work has a Google Scholar h-index of 63 and includes a 2003 Geophysical Research Letters paper cited approximately 1,070 times that significantly influenced the integration of satellite data into air quality and public health research over the past two decades. Jun is known for his mentorship of students. He has supervised ~70 graduate and undergraduate students and junior professionals over the last two decades. Jun’s trajectory of scholarship, leadership and service excellence is reflected in the many awards, recognition and appointments he has received, including the AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent award, the Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence (the highest honor for faculty achievement in the state of Iowa), an endowed professorship and department chair position at the University of Iowa, editorships for AGU and other top journals, an AGU Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing, and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society’s most popular session convener awards in 2021-2023.—Xiong Liu Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Cambridge, Massachusetts—Kelly Chance Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Cambridge, Massachusetts

Dr. Jun Wang is an internationally recognized leader in the field of remote sensing of aerosols and fires. He has been a science team member of 10 different satellite missions. His research efforts include many major advances in satellite algorithm physics for shortwave remote sensing. They have shed new light for gaining more insights on aerosol and fire properties from space. His research has spanned from being one of the first in satellite remote sensing of surface particulate matter air quality to the development of seminal algorithms for passive sensing of aerosol layer height and fire combustion efficiency (phase) to the most recent groundbreaking work of using satellite-measured backscattered moonlight to map the transport and optical depth of smoke particles at night and advanced aerosol retrievals from hyperspectral measurements. Equally illuminating is his team’s recent work of mapping aerosol plume height, for the first time, in each hour from the NASA DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite. On the modeling front, Dr. Wang has an evident track record of innovative application of satellite data to improve modeling and understanding of air quality and atmospheric composition (often via data assimilation). By assimilating the aerosol and fire products from geostationary satellites into a regional atmospheric model (RAMS), his early work attested to the importance of diurnal variations of dust and smoke aerosol emissions to the modeling of the surface energy budget and boundary layer process. Subsequent collaborative work led by him was 4D-VAR assimilation of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) radiance data and OMI sulfur dioxide (SO2) data to constrain the sources of dust and SO2 emissions, respectively; this was seminal at that time in the field of chemical data assimilation. Dr. Wang is known for his genuine generosity and his passion for collaborative research that have served our community well. For example, the numerical test bed that he and his team developed for satellite remote sensing of aerosols is accessible to the public and used by approximately 40 research groups around the world. In summary, Dr. Wang’s scholarly productivity and originality, along with his outstanding service to the AGU and atmospheric science communities, epitomize the qualities recognized by the Ascent Award. —Kelly Chance, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Mass.

I am delighted and honored to receive the 2022 AGU Ascent Award. I am grateful to my nominator, Kelly Chance, and supporters for their precious time spent in the nomination process. I thank the selection committee for this empowering and wonderful recognition. For the past 20 years, I have had the pleasure and privilege to learn from and work with many individuals in the field of atmospheric sciences, especially at the intersection of atmospheric composition and climate change. I thank my Ph.D. adviser, Sundar A. Christopher (University of Alabama in Huntsville), and my postdoctoral advisers, Scot T. Martin and Daniel J. Jacob (Harvard University). Their support and mentorship not only shaped my early research trajectory but also instilled in me the confidence and the desire to challenge myself often in pursuit of new research directions. I thank all the former and present members of my research group and would like to share this recognition with them. I also extend my appreciation to my research collaborators, including Peter R. Colarco, David J. Diner, Daven K. Henze, Edward J. Hyer, Charles M. Ichoku, G. Darrel Jenerette, Shobha Kondragunta, Robert C. Levy, Xiong Liu, Steven D. Miller, Jeffrey S. Reid, Arlindo M. da Silva, Eric M. Wilcox, John E. Yorks, and many more. Their generosity and wisdom have helped me in research areas from satellite remote sensing of atmospheric composition to chemical data assimilation and satellite mission development. My gratitude also goes to the faculty and staff at the University of Iowa for their tremendous collegiality. I am thankful to the research programs (and the program managers thereof) in NASA, NOAA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, and Office of Naval Research that have funded (and managed) my research projects. I thank my colleagues in NASA and NOAA for their team spirit to tackle day-to-day operational challenges (during the pandemic) in providing the satellite observations to users (like myself) in the research and application communities. I look forward to the successful launch of the TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) satellite mission led by Dr. Kelly Chance, as it will provide the first-ever hourly mapping of atmospheric gas pollutants over North America. Finally, I am in debt to my wife, Jing Zeng, our parents, and our three children, Kerry, Cindy, and Justin, for their love and support. Without them, I would not have been able to make any of the achievements mentioned in the citation. —Jun Wang, University of Iowa, Iowa City