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Studying Venus is essential for understanding the evolution of terrestrial planets, especially for Earth. The hellish climate on Venus is likely to be a result of the runaway greenhouse in the past. This leads scientists to the question why Earth and Venus evolved so divergently given their similarities in mass and radius. The current Venus climate is a key to uncovering this mystery in the past. There is an urgent need to fully understand the complicated coupling among atmospheric dynamics, chemistry and clouds, since at least three Venus missions (EnVision, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS) have been planned to launch around 2030. In this talk, I will focus on this coupling, aiming to disentangle the effects from various atmospheric processes on observables. Based on my recent work, I found that the clouds and cloud-related tracers (e.g., H2O and SO2) are subject to dynamics, photochemistry and cloud processes in different ways, and this is also dependent on spatial location. My work will greatly help to maximize the scientific return of future Venus missions.
I graduated from USTC in 2015 and obtained my bachelor's degree in atmospheric science. In 2015-2018, I worked with Prof. Rui Li at USTC on my master project of cloud and precipitation physics in the Earth climate system. From 2018 to 2022, I worked with Prof. Xi Zhang at UC Santa Cruz on my PhD project of photochemistry, dynamics and clouds in the Venus climate. At the same time, I also worked with Prof. Francis Nimmo on planetary geophysics on icy satellites. I started my postdoc in 2022 summer at Technical University of Denmark and continue my research on planetary climate modelling. I work with Prof. Joao Mendonca and study the complicated climate systems on Venus as well as other terrestrial planets. My research interest includes the Venus atmosphere variabilities, the Venus climate evolution and the diversity and habitability of terrestrial planets. Please contact me at wenshao@dtu.dk or visit my website at wenchengshao.net, if you would like to know more about me.