Atmospheric physics -
- Atmospheric physic uses mathematical and physical models to study the Earth's atmosphere and understand its weather systems. Understanding the physical processes in weather foresting models and climate models is of vital importance to the functioning of a modern society.
Areas of interest -
- The tropics are an excellent laboratory for studying convection. Even though convection dominates the physical processes in the tropics, to this day it is poorly understood. It is also one the least understood physical process in middle latitude atmospheric physics and one of the biggest reasons for the incorrect weather forecasts. My primary research focus is on moist convection and its interaction with large scale disturbances. My research topics include, but are not limited, to modeling physics of the convectively coupled equatorial waves, particularly the Kelvin waves; the “holy grail” of tropical meteorology, the Madden-Julian oscillation and tropical storms and hurricanes.
Research history -
For the past decade I have been working mostly from Croatia, EU. I had a unique opportunity to implement the knowledge, techniques and diagnostic tools developed while working at New Mexico Tech onto European models such as ECMWF. I led European project EMBRACE, formed my own scientific group, mentored PhD students, but continued to collaborate with NMT group.My goals in research -
Improving the weather and climate forecasts is today’s imperative and it requires broad range of scientists working together. Apart from continuing to work in tropical meteorology I wish to work on joint projects and in interdisciplinary research.
Field Projects -
Although most of my research involves theoretical modeling, I find the field work of the utmost importance. My first field project was EPIC2001 (Eastern Pacific Investigation of Climate). Today, pending the NSF approval, I am organizing the OTREC (Organization of Tropical Eastern Pacific Convection, PI: Dave Raymond) field project where we want to determine the characteristics of deep convection in the eastern Pacific ocean and the southwest Caribbean.
Tropical Weather Research at the New Mexico Tech Geophysical Research Center
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