Svitlana V. Krakovska

Biosketch

Dr. Svitlana Krakovska leads the Laboratory of Applied Climatology at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute of the State Emergency Service and National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She holds a PhD in Geophysics and began her career developing bin cloud models, pioneering their application for Antarctica. With more than three decades of research, she has advanced meteorology, climate modelling, and climate change adaptation in Ukraine and internationally. Since 2013, she has represented Ukraine as the Vice National Focal Point of the IPCC. In the Sixth Assessment Cycle, she contributed as Review Editor of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, Lead Author of the Atlas and Interactive Atlas, and Contributing Author to the Summary for Policymakers and several other chapters of the WGI. She overwintered at Ukraine’s Antarctic station “Akademik Vernadsky” in 1997/98 and in 2021 received the Order of Princess Olga (Third Class) for her contributions to polar science. Nature included her among its “10 people who helped shape science in 2022” in a profile titled Voice for Ukraine, highlighting her leadership of Ukraine’s IPCC delegation at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Her speech at that session, reported by Politico and The Washington Post, underscored the link between fossil fuel dependence, climate change, and war enablers. In 2025, she was named Scientist of the Month by the WCRP Academy. Dr. Krakovska is also known for her science communication and serves on the UN Taskforce Expert Group on Net Zero and the UNCCD Science-Policy Interface.

Research Interests

Dr. Krakovska’s research spans atmospheric processes and climate change impacts, integrating numerical modelling, process studies, and applied assessment. Early in her career, she investigated cloud seeding in Crimea and the steppe regions of Ukraine, implementing and testing ice nucleation and coagulation processes in a bin numerical model to explore precipitation enhancement and hail suppression. She developed a 3D diagnostic tropospheric model with a 1D prognostic cloud model for her PhD and studied floods on the Elbe River and in the Carpathians. She later advanced bin cloud microphysics models, pioneering their use in Antarctica to examine precipitation formation and phase transitions under polar conditions. More recently, she has studied clouds producing extreme precipitation, particularly those linked to atmospheric rivers in the Antarctic Peninsula, with implications for ice sheet stability and sea-level rise. Using regional and global climate models, she investigates interactions among cloud processes, hydrology, and circulation patterns. In parallel, Dr. Krakovska develops methodologies to assess climate vulnerability and risk, integrating hazard, sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity. This approach has been applied across multiple sectors at the oblast level in Ukraine and nationally for the agriculture and transport sectors, providing actionable insights for climate adaptation. Her work bridges process-level cloud microphysics and dynamics with systemic risk assessment, linking scientific understanding to practical climate-resilient development