Publications

First-Author Journal Articles

1. Cheng, Y., McColl, K., Mickley, L., & Feng, X. (2026).
   Large overestimation of projected western U.S. wildfire burned forest area with warming.
   AGU Advances, 7(2).
   DOI
   Research Highlight in journal and AGU’s EOS How Much Will Western Wildfires Worsen Under Warming?
   This Week from AGU: Western U.S. wildfire projections may be greatly overestimated

2. Cheng, Y., & McColl, K. (2024).
   Unexpected warming from land radiative management.
   Geophysical Research Letters, 51(22).
   DOI
   Research Highlight in GRL and AGU’s EOS Seemingly Simple Climate Adaptation Strategy Could Backfire;
   featured in The Guardian Why cooling white roofs cause neighbours to swelter.

3. Cheng, Y., Grachev, A., & van Heerwaarden, C. (2023).
   Logarithmic profiles of velocity in stably stratified atmospheric boundary layers.
   Physical Review Fluids, 8(11).
   DOI
   Editors’ Suggestion.

4. Cheng, Y., Hu, Z., & McColl, K. (2023).
   Anomalously darker land surfaces become wetter due to mesoscale circulations.
   Geophysical Research Letters, 50(17).
   DOI

5. Cheng, Y., & McColl, K. (2023).
   Thermally direct mesoscale circulations caused by land surface roughness gradients.
   Geophysical Research Letters, 50(16).
   DOI

6. Cheng, Y., Giometto, M., Kauffmann, P., Lin, L., Cao, C., Zupnick, C., Li, H., Li, Q., Huang, Y., Abernathey, R., & Gentine, P. (2022).
   Deep learning for subgrid-scale turbulence modeling in large-eddy simulations of the convective atmospheric boundary layer.
   Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 14(5).
   DOI

7. Cheng, Y., Li, Q., Li, D., & Gentine, P. (2021).
   Logarithmic profile of temperature in sheared and unstably stratified atmospheric boundary layers.
   Physical Review Fluids, 6.
   DOI

8. Cheng, Y., Chan, P., Wei, X., Hu, Z., Kuang, Z., & McColl, K. (2021).
   Soil moisture control of precipitation re-evaporation over a heterogeneous land surface.
   Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 78(10).
   DOI

9. Cheng, Y., Li, Q., Grachev, A., Argentini, S., Fernando, H., & Gentine, P. (2020).
   Power-law scaling of turbulence cospectra for stably stratified atmospheric boundary layer.
   Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 177.
   DOI

10. Cheng, Y., Li, Q., Argentini, S., Sayde, C., & Gentine, P. (2020).
    A model for turbulence spectra in the equilibrium range of the stable atmospheric boundary layer.
    Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(5).
    DOI

11. Cheng, Y., Sayde, C., Li, Q., Basara, J., Selker, J., Tanner, E., & Gentine, P. (2017).
    Failure of Taylor’s hypothesis in the atmospheric surface layer and its correction for eddy-covariance measurements.
    Geophysical Research Letters, 44(9).
    DOI
    Research Highlight in GRL and AGU’s EOS Global Atmospheric Observations May Need Tweaking for Turbulence.

Co-Authored Journal Articles

1. Chen, D., Cheng, Y., Chong, C., Gentine, P., Jia, W., Monier, B., & Shen, S. (2025).
   Pre-averaging fractional processes observed with noise, with an application to turbulence.
   Journal of Applied Probability.
   DOI

2. Chen, C., Li, Y., Luo, X., Li, Y., Cheng, Y., & Zhu, Z. (2024).
   Biophysical effects of croplands on land surface temperature.
   Nature Communications, 15.
   DOI

3. Li, Q., Cheng, Y., & Gentine, P. (2021).
   Connection between mass flux transport and eddy diffusivity in convective atmospheric boundary layers.
   Geophysical Research Letters, 48.
   DOI

4. Liu, Y., Cheng, Y., & Gentine, P. (2021).
   Development of a daily multi-layer cropland soil moisture dataset for China using machine learning and application in effects of cropping patterns.
   Journal of Hydrometeorology, 22.
   DOI

5. Zhu, W., Jia, S., Lall, U., Cheng, Y., & Gentine, P. (2020).
   An observation-driven optimization method for continuous estimation of evaporative fraction over large heterogeneous areas.
   Remote Sensing of Environment, 247.
   DOI

6. Yu, B., Shang, S., Zhu, W., Gentine, P., & Cheng, Y. (2019).
   Mapping daily evapotranspiration over a large irrigation district from MODIS data using a novel hybrid dual-source coupling model.
   Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 276.
   DOI