Research | polyu

Research Interests

Hydroclimatic Extremes
Compound Climate Extremes
Climate Adaptation and Resilience
Climate Informatics and GeoAI
Global Change and Sustainability
Remote Sensing Applications

Research Projects

Co-PI, Advancing Compound Hazard Resilience and Adaptation for Urban Building Community in a Changing Climate, Research Grants Council (RGC) Collaborative Research Fund (CRF), 2025–2028.
PI, Unraveling the Spatiotemporal Non-stationarity and Causal Mechanisms of Extreme Precipitation in a Changing Climate, Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF), 2025–2027.
PI, Strengthening Urban Resilience to Compound Weather and Climate Extremes, Hong Kong Scholar Program, 2025–2027.
PI, Elucidating the Mechanisms and Dynamics of Flash Drought from the Perspective of Land‒Atmosphere Feedbacks, Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF), 2024–2026.
Co-PI, Multi-Sensor Monitoring, Geophysical Interpretation and Prediction of Sea Level Change in Hong Kong, Research Grants Council (RGC) Collaborative Research Fund (CRF), 2024–2027.
PI, Unveiling the Dynamics of Compound Extremes with Air Pollution Interactions in the Context of Climate Change and Urbanization, Joint Research Fund, Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development (RISUD), 2024–2027.
PI, Drought Hazard Assessment and Projection in A Warming Climate, FCE Young Researcher Collaborative Research Fund, 2023–2025.
PI, Incorporating Spatial Heterogeneity of Rainfall Response to Climate Change into the Design of Slope Drainage Provisions in Hong Kong, Public Policy Research (PPR) Funding Scheme, 2023–2024.
PI, Climate-Resilient Planning and Design for Coastal Stormwater Drainage Systems, Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF), 2022–2024.
PI, Integration of Emerging Drought Risk into Hong Kong’s Climate Adaptation Planning and Environmental Policy, RILS Strategic Supporting Scheme, 2022–2024.
PI, Urban Flood Risk Assessment and Prediction Under Climate Change, Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute (SCRI) Fund, 2022–2024.
PI, Detection and Projection of Coastal Erosion Hotspots Driven by Extreme Sea Levels under a Changing Climate, RILS Strategic Supporting Scheme, 2021–2023.
PI, Integration of InSAR, GNSS, and Earth System Modeling Techniques for Predicting Future Change in Coastal Inundation Risk, LSGI Collaborative Research Grant, 2021–2023.
PI, Improving Robustness and Reliability of Hydroclimatic Projections through A New Multi-Model Ensemble Framework, Research Grants Council (RGC) Early Career Scheme (ECS), 2020–2022.
PI, A Stochastic Multi-Model Ensemble Framework for Probabilistic Hydrological Forecasting, National Science Foundation of China (NSFC), 2019–2021.
PI, Improving Urban Resilience to Projected Changes of Extreme Weather Events, Hong Kong Polytechnic University Start-up Fund, 2017–2020.

Media Coverage

Drought:

Nature, ScienceDaily, Phys.org, Grist, ScienMag, Mirage News, Iowa Climate, PolyU, PolyU Pulse Newsletter,

UT Austin, TEXAS Global, etc.

Drought-to-Downpour Shift:
Yahoo UK, Mirage News, Earth.com, The Daily Texan, Phys.org, WTX News, Newsweek, Euronews, TechNews, PolyU PAIR,

UT Austin, The Conversation, The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), Global Water Forum,

South Africa Today, Mongabay, Morning Star, Phys.org, etc.

Heatwaves and Extreme Sea Levels:

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), Scientific American, Nature Asia, France 24, Scimex,

Phys.org, CCTV, Xinhua Net, People's Daily, China News, Tencent News, PolyU PAIR, etc.

Research Work

Hydroclimatic Extremes

Selected Research Outputs:

Cheng, X., Wang, S., Chen, J., and AghaKouchak, A. (2025) Global assessment and hotspots of lake drought. Communications Earth & Environment, 6, 308.

Li, J., Wang, S., Zhu, J., Wang, D., and Zhao, T. (2025) Accelerated shifts from heatwaves to heavy rainfall in a changing climate. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 8, 214.

Zhang, B., Wang, S., and Slater, L. (2024) Anthropogenic climate change doubled the frequency of compound drought and heatwaves in low-income regions. Communications Earth & Environment, 5, 715.

Qing, Y., Wang, S., Yang, Z-L., and Gentine, P. (2023) Soil moisture−atmosphere feedbacks have triggered the shifts from drought to pluvial conditions since 1980. Communications Earth & Environment, 4, 254.

Qing, Y. and Wang, S., Ancell, B., and Yang, Z-L. (2022) Accelerating flash droughts induced by the joint influence of soil moisture depletion and atmospheric aridity. Nature Communications, 13, 1139.

Hydroclimatic Predictions

Selected Research Outputs:

Tang, S., Wang, S., Jiang, J., and Zheng, Y. (2025) Incorporating causality into deep learning architectures to improve flash drought forecasts. Water Resources Research, 61, e2024WR039470.

Zhang, B., Wang, S., Moradkhani, H., Slater, L., and Liu, J. (2022) A vine copula-based ensemble projection of precipitation intensity-duration-frequency curves at sub-daily to multi-day time scales. Water Resources Research, 58, e2022WR032658.

Zhang, B., Wang, S., Qing, Y., Zhu, J., Wang, D., and Liu, J. (2022) A vine copula-based polynomial chaos framework for improving multi-model hydroclimatic projections at a multi-decadal convection-permitting scale. Water Resources Research, 58, e2022WR031954.

Zhang, B., Wang, S., and Wang, Y. (2021) Probabilistic projections of multidimensional flood risks at a convection-permitting scale. Water Resources Research, 57, e2020WR028582.

Wang, S., Ancell, B.C., Huang, G.H., and Baetz, B.W. (2018) Improving robustness of hydrologic ensemble predictions through probabilistic pre- and post-processing in sequential data assimilation. Water Resources Research, 54, 2129–2151.

Climate Impacts

Selected Research Outputs:

Chen, H., Wang, S., Zhu, P., and AghaKouchak, A. (2026) Winter wheat yield sensitivity to snow drought is increasing across the Northern Hemisphere. Nature Food, 7, 174–184.

Qing, Y., Wang, S., AghaKouchak, A., and Gentine, P. (2025) Delayed formation of Arctic snow cover in response to wildland fires in a warming climate. Nature Climate Change, 15, 1091–1098.

Jing, Y., Wang, S., Chan, P.-W., and Yang, Z.-L. (2025) Gross primary productivity is more sensitive to accelerated flash droughts. Communications Earth & Environment, 6, 34.

Yuan, W., Tian, J., Wang, M., Wang, S., et al. (2025) Impacts of rising atmospheric dryness on terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 6, 712–727.

Coastal Hazards and Risk Assessments

Selected Research Outputs:

Zhou M., Wang, S., and Peng, D. (2025) Economic losses from typhoon-induced coastal flooding in Hong Kong under future climate change. Journal of Hydrology, 661, 133569.

Zhou M., Wang, S., and Vousdoukas, M. (2025) Unraveling the spatiotemporal dynamics of compound heatwaves and extreme sea levels in a changing climate. Journal of Hydrology, 662, 134016.

Zhou, M. and Wang, S. (2024) The risk of concurrent heatwaves and extreme sea levels along the global coastline is increasing. Communications Earth & Environment, 5, 144.

You, J., Wang, S., and Zhang, B. (2024) Spatially seamless and temporally continuous assessment on compound flood risk in Hong Kong. Journal of Hydrology, 645,132217.

Zhang, B. and Wang, S. (2021) Probabilistic characterization of extreme storm surges induced by tropical cyclones. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126, e2020JD033557.