Incoming EPS Assistant Professor Elizabeth Yankovsky to Join the YCNCC Scientific Leadership Team

Incoming Earth & Planetary Sciences Assistant Professor Dr. Elizabeth Yankovsky will be joining the Scientific Leadership Team of the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture (YCNCC) this fall. YCNCC News caught up with Elizabeth earlier this week to learn more about her and her work, and what brought her to Yale. The interview has been condensed and edited.

How would you describe your research to a general audience?

The ocean evolves over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Energy is put into the ocean by the sun and winds, giving rise to planetary scale ocean currents that exchange waters on a timescale of thousands of years. Energy is removed by molecular-scale processes. Ocean turbulence refers to the fluid interactions spanning all of these scales, and serves as the conduit by which energy and information is transferred through the climate system. The unifying theme of my research is the physics of turbulence in the ocean, with the goals of (1) understanding its influence on the large-scale ocean and climate, and (2) improving climate models by more accurately modeling turbulent processes within them. I am also interested in applying ocean modeling and theory in order to address significant challenges in the climate science field, such as marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).

Can you share a bit about your previous position(s) and what brought you to Yale?

I attended graduate school in Princeton’s Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences program from 2015-2020. During that time I conducted research within the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton. My graduate research focused on studying turbulent processes in the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic is one of the most rapidly changing regions on our planet, and climate models struggle with accurately representing this region due to the many small-scale turbulent phenomena operating here. I studied how turbulent instabilities evolve within the continental shelf regions of the Arctic and how this impacts the structure of this ocean basin.. Additionally, I worked on improving the representation of fluid instabilities  in the GFDL ocean model to improve this model’s fidelity in climate predictions. Following my PhD studies, I was a postdoctoral researcher at New York University from 2020-2023. I participated in the Ocean Transport and Eddy Energy Climate Process Team, a multi-institutional project funded by NOAA and NSF. The aim of this project was to improve our physical understanding and model representation of ocean eddies, whirlpools of 10-100km scale that significantly influence ocean current systems and biological and chemical distributions in the ocean. I then worked at the non-profit startup [C]Worthy for a year, helping to develop scientific knowledge and software to support the emerging mCDR industry. I began my position in the Earth & Planetary Sciences Department at Yale in July 2024.

This fall you will be joining YCNCC’s Scientific Leadership Team — what interests / excites you about natural carbon capture and what attracts you to the Center’s mission?

As an Earth scientist, I am deeply inspired by our field’s intersection between theory and the real world, especially given its significance to modern societal challenges such as climate change mitigation. I am excited by the possibility that my research in ocean modeling and turbulent dynamics can help inform such an urgent and significant endeavor. I am particularly excited by the prospects offered by ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE). Due to its premise of accelerating a natural weathering process already operating on Earth and promises of climatically significant scalability, I am encouraged by the idea of OAE as a climate mitigation strategy. I am looking forward to working with the scientists at YCNCC, continuing collaborations with my colleagues at [C]Worthy, and engaging with the broader research community in an effort to ensure that OAE becomes a safe, effective, and scalable method of mCDR.

What are your plans for the coming academic year?

My plans for the coming year involve getting adjusted to the rhythm of being at Yale, wrapping up and publishing some of my existing projects, getting to know the faculty here, and starting to prepare for teaching and developing courses. I’m also excited to start working on mentoring a graduate student who will be joining this fall, and continuing to work on a minor discourse project with another graduate student. I’m also looking forward to getting involved in some of the research projects that are ongoing at the YCNCC and gaining more perspective on how my expertise/background may contribute here.