Stellenangebot / Job offer
2 Postdoc positions within the project „Updating the data basis for adaptation to climate change in Germany“ (UDAG)
The Institute of Coastal Systems – Analysis and Modeling, a multidisciplinary institute for coastal research and regional system modeling located in Geesthacht, near Hamburg, Germany, is seeking two curious and driven candidates for the generation of up-to-date regional climate projections to support German climate change adaptation strategy.
The envisaged start of the positions is the fourth quarter of 2023 and are initially limited to three years. Successful applicants will join the department Regional Land and Atmosphere Modeling within the Institute of Coastal Systems – System Analysis and Modeling at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon.
The aim of the BMBF project „Updating the data basis for adaptation to climate change in Germany“ (UDAG) is to update regional climate projections for the use in the German adaptation strategy, based on improvements in available models and data. Using the new global CMIP6 scenario simulations, UDAG will provide a quality-checked ensemble of regional climate projections for Europe (12 km resolution) and for „hydrological Germany“ (including critical catchment basins beyond Germany, 3 km resolution).
Hereon is leading efforts to optimally configure the German flagship weather and climate model ICON for these regions and resolutions, using Climate Limited-area Mode (CLM) simulations. Transient climate projections from 1961 to 2100 will be generated and standardised for publication in the world wide accessible climate data archive. Results will be evaluated using the EvaSuite tool developed by the CLM-community, with a focus on wind and radiation statistics for selected areas in the context of renewable energy demand.
Your tasks:
Position 1 will focus on the setup, execution and evaluation of the 12 km downscaling simulations, in cooperation with project partners. The candidate will contribute to the development of converters to provide forcing data for ICON-CLM and extend the ICON model code itself for the internal accumulation/averaging of selected variables. In addition, the position will contribute to the assessment of the new CMIP6-based ensemble in comparison to the existing climate data base.
Position 2 will focus on the setup, execution and evaluation of the 3 km downscaling simulations. In addition, position 2 will use AI methods for temporal downsampling to sub-hourly frequency of climate model data (precipitation). A user-oriented tool will be developed for interacting with an AI-based model, which will be trained on high-resolution data, and tested and evaluated on these 3 km simulations. Moreover, comparisons with existing 3 km simulations from other projects will be conducted.
Your profile:
Required qualifications: Ph.D. in meteorology, physics, geo-sciences or related field, excellent programming skills (preferably in FORTRAN or Python), experience with regional climate models and interest in interdisciplinary climate research. For position 2, skills in mathematics, physics and numerical computation are advantageous, while experience with AI or deep learning is helpful but not required.
