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Research Ruminations
Sergey Kravstov studies ocean currents
By Dan Polley
By using advances in technology and money from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Research Growth Initiative, Sergey Kravtsov will study longer-term projects.
Kravtsov“s one-year research project, “Effects of Eddies onto Decadal Variability of Large-Scale Ocean Currents and Climate,” will facilitate longer term and larger scale studies. Eddies are small-scale fluctuations of oceanic currents and temperature fields, he says.
“Climate is complex,” says Kravtsov, who came to UWM after researching at the UCLA.
The project is unique in that it would use much higher resolutions to study and correlate data than previous models, he says. By using the higher resolutions, he would be able to produce results that are more efficient and better than other studies.
Kravtsov says that through the new higher resolutions, he “found a novel way of looking at what the model tells us.”
It“s unusual for data-driven models to be used in climate sciences, he says.
Through the project, Kravtsov hopes to study how ocean processes can vary from decade to decade and how they can be affected through processes that reach longer distances. Kravtsov and his team will look at how smaller-scale disturbances can lead to variability on a lower scale.
The project, he says, will hopefully serve as a pilot study through which he can better understand and demonstrate how those changes affect larger weather conditions.
Kravtsov said processes on smaller time scale on global climate can have “significant” effects.
He said that sometimes, “You have to sacrifice completeness of the model. You have to simplify somewhere.”
Current funding for the project is at about $150,000, which includes funding for the one doctoral student who is helping on the project, Kravtsov says.
Kravtsov, an assistant professor in Mathematical Sciences/Atmospheric Sciences, earned a doctorate in Physical Oceanography from Florida State University.
He says he“ll seek funding through the next wave of the Research Growth Initiative as well as continue to seek funding from outside the university, including the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
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