Profile

Ken Golden is an applied mathematician who works on modeling and simulating multiscale systems that arise in geophysics and materials science. He is particularly interested in developing models of sea ice and its role in the climate system, treating sea ice as a complex material exhibiting composite structure on length scales ranging over ten orders of magnitude. Golden brings to bear rigorous mathematics to key problems in the physics and biology of sea ice such as fluid flow through the porous brine microstructure, the evolution of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice, thermal transport and fluid convection, ocean wave propagation in the marginal ice zone, anomolous diffusion and floe trajectories, and the dynamics of microbial communities living in sea ice. He has also worked extensively on the mathematics of sea ice remote sensing and the interaction of electromagnetic waves with composite materials.

A principal theme running through Golden's work is linkage of scales: incorporating small scale information into calculations of effective behavior on larger scales, like those relevant in coarse-grained climate models, as well as the inverse problem of reconstructing local characteristics from observed macroscopic behavior. Similar themes run in statistical physics and homogenization theory for composites, which provide approaches and models Golden has often used to study sea ice. His research is helping to advance how sea ice is represented in climate models, and to improve projections of climate change and the response of polar ecosystems.