Ben Kravitz is using IU’s Big Red II supercomputer to model the effects of environmental and climate change in Indiana.

Kravitz, an assistant professor in earth and atmospheric sciences at IU Bloomington, is a part of the Prepared for Environmental Change Grand Challenge. The goal of this project is to give Hoosiers information about challenges triggered by rapid environmental change.

Kravitz uses global climate model simulations of various scenarios, then downscales them into regional models for Indiana and the Midwest. These models can then be used by other researchers to understand how climate change could affect water resources, agriculture, emergency planning, and even public health.

Kravitz aims to share these models online with government officials and the public, to minimize negative impacts on Hoosiers.

“I’m a climate modeler, and IU’s commitment to making supercomputers available to its staff and researchers is one of the reasons I took the job here,” Kravitz said. “I can do so much amazing work because IU wants to make it happen.”