Charles S. Zender

Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine

Biography

Charlie Zender is Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He received his Ph.D. in Astrophysical, Planetary, and Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1996. Zender's research focuses on Earth system physics, with emphasis on rapid climate processes including snow and ice dynamics, desert dust, fire-emitted aerosols, and wind-driven phenomena. His group discovered that pollution darkening snow heats the planet faster than any other mechanism, contributing to policy shifts to reduce soot emissions.

Zender has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and serves as author and maintainer of the netCDF Operators (NCO) software toolkit, which he has developed since 1995 for analysis of gridded geoscience data. He received the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Leptoukh Lecturer Award in 2021 for achievement in computational sciences and informatics enabling advances in domain science. Zender has served as Co-Chair of NASA's Earth Science Data Systems Dataset Interoperability Working Group since 2013 and shared the AGU Open Science Recognition Prize ``for outstanding work in advancing Open Science related to Earth and space science and its impact globally'' in 2024. He has supervised twelve Ph.D. students to completion and eight postdoctoral scholars.

Zender's current research includes improving representations of surface-atmosphere radiative coupling in Earth system models, developing advanced compression algorithms for climate datasets, and monitoring particulate matter air quality in desert regions. He has been Principal Investigator on grants totaling over $7 million from agencies including DOE, NASA, and NSF. His work spans climate modeling, remote sensing, cryospheric processes, and scientific software development, with applications to understanding climate sensitivity, ice sheet dynamics, and human health impacts of environmental change.

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Education

A.B. in Physics, Harvard University, 1990
M.S. in Astrophysics, Planetary, and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1993
Ph.D. in Astrophysics, Planetary, and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1996

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Distinctions

Kavli Frontiers Fellow, US National Academy of Sciences and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, 2009-2011
Leptoukh Lecturer Award, Earth and Space Science Informatics Section, American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2021
Open Science Recognition Prize, American Geophysical Union (AGU) as one of the 45-member team named 'Major Contributors to the CF Conventions', 2024
Editor's Citations for Excellence in Refereeing, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2023-2024
Outstanding Student Presentation in Atmospheric Sciences Section, Fall AGU Meeting, 1995
SourceForge.net Community Choice Award for netCDF Operators (NCO) Software, 2022
Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education Award, UC Irvine School of Physical Sciences, Department of Earth System Science, 2001-2002

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Areas of Expertise

Earth System Physics
Mineral Dust Aerosol Modeling
Snow Albedo Feedback Mechanisms
Cryospheric Radiative Transfer
Polar Climate Surface Melt
Geoscientific Data Compression
Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance

Recent Publications

J. Tolento, C. S. Zender, A. F. Roberts, E. E. Thomas, C. A. Whicker-Clarke, “Sensitivity of Simulated Polar Climate to Improved Partitioning of Spectral Solar Irradiance between Visible and Near-Infrared Bands” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 130, no. 17, pp. e2025JD043796, 2025.
L. Manzo, C. S. Zender, J. Tolento, C. A. Whicker-Clarke, “Improved Representations of Longwave Surface Emissivity to Reduce Surface and Atmospheric Heating Biases in Earth System Models” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 130, no. 3, pp. e2024JD041776, 2025.
J. Tolento, C. S. Zender, C. A. Whicker-Clarke, “Surface and Atmospheric Heating Responses to Spectrally Resolved Albedo of Frozen and Liquid Water Surfaces” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 129, no. 7, pp. e2023JD039824, 2024.
C. A. Whicker-Clarke, R. Antwerpen, M. G. Flanner, A. Schneider, M. Tedesco, C. S. Zender, “The Effect of Physically Based Ice Radiative Processes on Greenland Ice Sheet Albedo and Surface Mass Balance in E3SM” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 129, no. 7, pp. e2023JD040241, 2024.
A. Evan, A. Adebiyi, J. Burney, S.-H. Chen, P. D'odorico, M. Fischella, A. Heaney, K. Hoyer, J. Kok, R. Lybrand, G. Okin, W. Porter, T. Rinaldo, C. S. Zender, “Beyond the Haze: A UC Dust Report on the Causes, Impacts, and Future of Dust Storms in California”, 2024.
A. Jelenak, P. J. T. Leonard, C. S. Zender, the NASA Dataset Interoperability Working Group (DIWG), “ESDS-RFC-054: Dataset Interoperability Recommendations for Earth Science: Part 3”, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Standards Office (ESO), 2024.
A. Schneider, C. S. Zender, N. Loeb, S. Price, “Use of Shallow Ice Core Measurements to Evaluate and Constrain 1980–1990 Global Reanalyses of Ice Sheet Precipitation Rates” (opens in new tab), Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 50, no. 19, pp. e2023GL103943, 2023.
M. K. Laffin, C. S. Zender, J. M. van Wessem, B. P. Y. Noël, W. Wang, “Wind-associated melt trends and contrasts between the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets” (opens in new tab), Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 50, no. 16, pp. e2023GL102828, 2023.
Q. Tang, J.-C. Golaz, L. P. Van Roekel, C. S. Zender, “The Fully Coupled Regionally Refined Model of E3SM Version 2: Overview of the Atmosphere, Land, and River Results” (opens in new tab), Geoscientific Model Development, vol. 16, no. 23, pp. 3953–3995, 2023.
J.-C. Golaz, L. P. Van Roekel, X. Zheng, C. S. Zender, “The DOE E3SM Model Version 2: Overview of the physical model and initial model evaluation” (opens in new tab), Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 14, no. 12, pp. e2022MS003156, 2022.
M. K. Laffin, C. S. Zender, J. M. van Wessem, S. Marinsek, “The role of föhn winds in eastern Antarctic Peninsula rapid ice shelf collapse” (opens in new tab), The Cryosphere, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 1369–1381, 2022.
A. Schneider, C. S. Zender, S. Price, “More Realistic Intermediate Depth Dry Firn Densification in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM)” (opens in new tab), Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 14, no. 3, 2022.
M. G. Flanner, J. Arnheim, J. Cook, C. Dang, C. He, X. Huang, D. Singh, S. M. Skiles, C. Whicker, C. S. Zender, “SNICAR-ADv3: A Community Tool for Modeling Spectral Snow Albedo” (opens in new tab), Geoscientific Model Development, vol. 14, no. 12, pp. 7673–7704, 2021.
P. M. Caldwell, C. R. Terai, B. Hillman, N. D. Keen, P. Bogenschutz, W. Lin, H. Beydoun, M. Taylor, L. Bertagna, A. Bradley, T. C. Clevenger, A. S. Donahue, C. Eldred, J. Foucar, C. Golaz, O. Guba, R. Jacob, J. Johnson, J. Krishna, W. Liu, et al., “Convection-Permitting Simulations with the E3SM Global Atmosphere” (opens in new tab), Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 13, 2021.
W. Wang, C. S. Zender, D. van As, R. S. Fausto, M. K. Laffin, “Greenland surface melt dominated by solar and sensible heating” (opens in new tab), Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 48, no. 7, pp. e2020GL090653, 2021.
M. K. Laffin, C. S. Zender, S. Singh, J. M. van Wessem, C. J. P. P. Smeets, C. H. Tijm-Reijmer, “Climatology and Evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula Föhn Wind-induced Melt Regime from 1979–2018” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 126, pp. e2020JD033682, 2021.
E. J. Hartnett, C. S. Zender, W. I. Fisher, D. Heimbigner, H. Lei, B. Curtis, K. Gerheiser, “Quantization and Next-Generation Zlib Compression for Fully Backward-Compatible, Faster, and More Effective Data Compression in netCDF Files”, Eos Trans. AGU, vol. 102, no. 54, 2021. Presented at 104th American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA, December 13–17, 2021.
E. J. Hartnett, C. S. Zender, “Additional netCDF Compression Options with the Community Codec Repository (CCR)”, Proceedings of the 37th AMS Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies (EIPT), AMS Press, 2021. Presented at 37th AMS Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies (EIPT), January 10–15.

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Most Cited Publications

T. C. Bond, C. S. Zender, “Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 118, pp. 5380-5552, 2013.
Flanner, M. G., C. S. Zender, J. T. Randerson, P. J. Rasch, “Present-Day Climate Forcing and Response from Black Carbon in Snow” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 112, no. D11, pp. D11202, 2007.
C. S. Zender, H. Bian, D. Newman, “Mineral Dust Entrainment And Deposition (DEAD) model: Description and 1990s dust climatology” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 108, no. D14, pp. 4416, 2003.
Huneeus, N., Schulz, M., Balkanski, Y., Griesfeller, J., Kinne, S., Prospero, J., Bauer, S., Boucher, O., Chin, M., Dentener, F., Diehl, T., Easter, R., Fillmore, D., Ghan, S., Ginoux, P., Grini, A., Horowitz, L., Koch, D., Krol, M. C., Landing, W., et al., “Global dust model intercomparison in AeroCom phase I” (opens in new tab), Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol. 11, no. 15, pp. 7781–7816, 2011.
Randerson, J. T., H. Liu, M. G. Flanner, S. D. Chambers, Y. Jin, P. G. Hess, G. Pfister, M. C. Mack, K. K. Treseder, L. R. Welp, F. S. Chapin, J. W. Harden, M. L. Goulden, E. Lyons, J. C. Neff, E. A. G. Schuur, C. S. Zender, “The Impact of Boreal Forest Fire on Climate Warming” (opens in new tab), Science, vol. 314, no. 5802, pp. 1130–1133, 2006.
J.-C. Golaz, P. M. Caldwell, L. P. Van Roekel, M. R. Petersen, Q. Tang, J. D. Wolfe, C. S. Zender, “The DOE E3SM coupled model version 1: Overview and evaluation at standard resolution” (opens in new tab), Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 2089-2129, 2019.
Flanner, M. G., Zender, C. S., Hess, P. G., Mahowald, N. M., Painter, T. H., Ramanathan, V., Rasch, P. J., “Springtime Warming and Reduced Snow Cover from Carbonaceous Particles” (opens in new tab), Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol. 9, no. 7, pp. 2481–2497, 2009.
Mahowald, N. M., Kloster, S., Engelstaedter, S., Moore, J. K., Mukhopadhyay, S., McConnell, J. R., Albani, S., Doney, S. C., Bhattacharya, A., Curran, M. A. J., Flanner, M. G., Hoffman, F. M., Lawrence, D. M., Lindsay, K., Mayewski, P. A., Neff, J., Rothenberg, D., Thomas, E., Thornton, P. E., Zender, C. S., “Observed 20th century desert dust variability: impact on climate and biogeochemistry” (opens in new tab), Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol. 10, pp. 12585–12628, 2010.
Flanner, M. G., C. S. Zender, “Linking Snowpack Microphysics and Albedo Evolution” (opens in new tab), Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, vol. 111, no. D12, pp. D12208, 2006.
Zender, C. S., R. Miller, I. Tegen, “Quantifying Mineral Dust Mass Budgets: Terminology, Constraints, and Current Estimates” (opens in new tab), Eos Trans. AGU, vol. 85, no. 48, pp. 509–512, 2004.

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Contact Information

Website: https://sites.ps.uci.edu/zender

Email: zender@uci.edu

Phone: (949) 891-2429

Address: 3323 Croul Hall

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This profile was created with the help of AI.

Last updated on 4/10/2026.