Sergey Kravtsov

  • Professor, School of Freshwater Sciences

Web: Personal Website

Educational Degrees

  • PhD, Physical Oceanography, Florida State, 1998
  • MS, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 1993
  • BS, Physics and Mathematics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 1991

Research Positions

  • Research scientist, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA, 2002-2004
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA, 1999-2001

Research Interests

My research is directed towards understanding the Earth's climate variability. I am particularly interested in studying how the interactions between processes acting on small (synoptic) scales with larger-scale (regional-to-global) processes affect the overall climate behavior. Examples of the problems I am dealing with include:

  • analysis and attribution of the Earth's surface temperature trends,
  • decadal climate variability in the tropical Pacific and Southern Ocean,
  • low-frequency, intraseasonal, variability of atmospheric jet streams,

among others. I approach these problems via a combination of statistical data analyses and dynamical studies that employ a hierarchy of climate models.

Selected Service and Projects

  • Collaborative Research: Regional climate-change projections through next-generation empirical and dynamical models. DOE research grant, 2007-2010.
  • Stochastic mode reduction in prototype climate models. UWM Research Growth Initiative, 2007-08.
  • Empirical Model Reduction and the Modeling Hierarchy in Climate Dynamics and the Geosciences, Stochastic Physics and Climate Modeling, T. Palmer and P. Williams, Eds., Cambridge University Press, 2009, with M. Ghil and D. Kondrashov.
  • Quasi-periodic decadal cycles in levels of lakes Michigan and Huron, J. of Great Lakes Research, (2009), 35 (1), 30-35, with J. L. Hanrahan and P. J. Roebber.
  • The relationship between statistically linear and nonlinear feedbacks and zonal-mean flow variability in an idealized climate model. J. Atmospheric Sciences (2009) 66, 353-372, with J. E. T. Hoeve, S. B. Feldstein, S. Lee, and S.-W. Sun.