About Tianyi Sun

Tianyi Sun

Senior Climate Scientist

Contact

Austin, Texas Office

Work

Areas of expertise:

Climate change mitigation, hydrogen fuels, greenhouse gas emissions and metrics, climate modeling, climate science communication.

Tianyi's research focuses on the impacts of short-lived climate forcers, such as methane and hydrogen. She explores how their emissions and mitigation affect the climate system, as well as the role of short-lived climate forcers in net zero emissions pathways. She also leads EDF’s hydrogen science work on hydrogen emissions measurements and their climate implications.

Background

Tianyi holds a Ph.D. in Climate Dynamics from the University of Texas at Austin and did her undergraduate studies in Atmospheric Sciences at Nanjing University, China. Tianyi joined EDF as a postdoctoral climate science fellow in 2019.

Publications

Momeni, A., J. D. Albertson, S. Herndon, C. Daube, D. Nelson, J. R. Roscioli, J. Shorter, E. Lunny, R. Wehr, G. Gadikota, Y. Cui, and T. Sun 2025: Quantification of Hydrogen Emission Rates Using Downwind Plume Characterization Techniques. Environmental Science & Technology. 59 (12), 6016-6024. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c13616

Sun, T., E. Shrestha, S.P. Hamburg, R. Kupers, and I.B. Ocko 2024: Climate impacts of hydrogen and methane emissions can considerably reduce the climate benefits across key hydrogen use cases and timescales. Environmental Science & Technology. [Featured on cover] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09030

Esquivel-Elizondo, S., Mejia, A.H., Sun, T. et al. 2023: Wide range in estimates of hydrogen emissions from infrastructure. Front. Energy Res. 11. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2023.1207208

Cohen-Shields, N., T. Sun, S.P. Hamburg and I.B. Ocko 2023: Distortion of sectoral roles in climate change threatens climate goals. Front. Clim. 5:1163557. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2023.1163557/full

Ivanovich, C.C., Sun, T., Gordon, D.R. et al. 2023: Future warming from global food consumption. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 297–302. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01605-8

Sun, T., I.B. Ocko and S.P. Hamburg 2022: Early Methane Mitigation Critical to Preserving Arctic Summer Sea Ice, Environmental Research Letters 17 044001. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4f10

Sun, T., I.B. Ocko, E. Sturcken and S.P. Hamburg 2021: Path to net zero is critical to climate outcome, Scientific Reports 11, 22173. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01639-y

Ocko, I.B., T. Sun, D. Shindell, M. Oppenheimer, A. Hristov, S.W. Pacala, D.L. Mauzerall, Y. Xu and S.P. Hamburg 2021: Acting rapidly to deploy readily available methane mitigation measures by sector can immediately slow global warming, Environmental Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf9c8

 

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