About Me
I am an Earth Scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, China. Prior to joining CAS in 2026, I worked as an Earth Scientist and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). I received my Ph.D. in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences from Purdue University.
The overarching goal of my research is to establish flexible, operational, and scalable modeling frameworks to investigate and predict global water, carbon, and energy cycle dynamics under changing climates and extreme events.
🔬 Research Interests
- Land Surface & Earth System Modeling: Kilometer-scale land surface simulations, coupled water-carbon dynamics, and soil hydrology.
- Mesh-Independent Hydrology & River Routing: Unstructured Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations (MPAS) and hexagonal grid frameworks for multi-scale flow direction and river networks.
- Compound Flooding & Hydro-Climate Extremes: Two-way coupled river-coastal hydrodynamic modeling and uncertainty quantification in extreme events.
- High-Performance Computing (HPC): Developing scalable Earth system models and parallel scientific software in C++, Fortran, and Python.
💻 Featured Open-Source Software
HexWatershed — A mesh-independent flow direction and watershed delineation model supporting structured, hexagonal, and unstructured Voronoi meshes. Integrated with DOE’s E3SM MOSART and indexed in CSDMS.
[Documentation] · [GitHub]PyFlowline — A mesh-independent river network generator and topological framework for hydrologic models. Available via
conda install -c conda-forge pyflowline.
[Documentation] · [Conda-Forge] · [GitHub]PyEarth — A lightweight Python library providing routine utilities for Earth science data analysis and spatial visualization.
[Documentation] · [Conda-Forge] · [GitHub]ECO3D — A three-dimensional process-based water and carbon cycle terrestrial ecosystem model (C++ and OpenMP).
[GitHub]
📢 Recent News Highlights
- 2026: Joined the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as an Earth Scientist. Published latest research on unstructured Voronoi mesh frameworks for large-scale hydrologic modeling in JAMES, and systematic evaluation of kilometer-scale land surface modeling in Journal of Hydrology.
- 2025: Presented the unified mesh framework at the E3SM All Hands Meeting.
- 2024: Invited talk on kilometer-scale river routing modeling at ESCO 2024, and conducted the HexWatershed 3.0 workshop at the CSDMS Annual Meeting.
📚 Selected Recent Publications
- Liao, C., D. Engwirda, D. Xu, T. Zhou, Z. Tan, L. R. Leung (2026). An unstructured Voronoi mesh framework for large-scale hydrologic and land surface models. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (Accepted).
- Li, L., G. Bisht, D. Xu, D. Hao, C. Liao, D. Feng, et al. (2026). Systematic evaluation of atmospheric forcing, surface datasets, and mesh effects on Kilometer-Scale land surface and river modeling. Journal of Hydrology, 135500.
- Negron-Juarez, R., C. Wright, S. Ferreira, K. Hirai, M. Kobayashi, J. M. Warren, R. Oliveira, C. Liao, L. R. Leung, et al. (2026). Influence of plateau, slope, and valley on soil hydrology during the dry season in a Central Amazon old-growth forest. Vadose Zone Journal, 25, e70095.
- Liao, C., et al. (2025). Discrete Global Grid System-based Flow Routing Datasets in the Amazon and Yukon Basins. Earth System Science Data.
Explore full list of publications →
✍️ Writing & Notes
In addition to academic research papers, I share articles and technical notes:
- 🌐 Science Articles — Notes on Earth science concepts, hydrology, and climate modeling.
- 💻 Technology Articles — Technical guides, programming notes, and HPC workflows.