Qian Weihong, a professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Peking University, died in the United States on October 30, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. Beijing time. He was 70 years old. His death was announced in an obituary released by the Peking University School of Physics, which noted that he passed away due to an illness that could not be cured.
Born on February 26, 1957, in Dongtai, Jiangsu Province, Qian was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, which he joined in December 1993. His academic career began at the Nanjing Institute of Meteorology, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in meteorology in 1982. He subsequently worked as a forecaster and engineer at the Dongtai Meteorological Bureau before returning to academia. He earned his doctoral degree in meteorology from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Lanzhou University in 1994.
Published over 100 Academic Journal Papers
Qian’s professional life was centered on climatology and the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere. After completing his postdoctoral research at the Peking University Department of Geophysics between 1994 and 1996, he joined the university’s faculty. He was appointed as a professor in 2000 and became a doctoral supervisor in 2001. He retired from his teaching and research duties in March 2020.
Throughout his career, Qian published more than 100 papers in academic journals. He also authored or co-authored several significant textbooks and monographs, including Introduction to Planetary Earth Dynamics (1994), Convection and Structure in the Atmosphere (1996), and Global Climate System (2009). His later works included Climate Change and Atlas of Extreme Climate Events in China (2011) and Real World: Structures and Perturbations in the Universe and Earth’s Atmosphere (2020).
Retired from the University Faculty in March 2020
His work primarily addressed climatology and the complex physical processes involving sea-air interactions. He contributed to the development of atmospheric sciences in China through both his research and his extensive work as an educator and author.
He retired from his position at the university in March 2020. He had been a member of the faculty at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences since 1996.