Employment & Opportunities

Graduate Assistantship in Regional Climate Change - University of Nebraska

A fully funded graduate assistantship is available in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln for research in regional climate change to begin in Fall 2022. The specific thesis/dissertation topic will be determined collaboratively by the student and the primary supervisor, Dr. Ross Dixon, but will involve analysis of CMIP6 model output and performing regional climate simulations to address uncertainty in regional precipitation change in climate projections.

If you are interested, please send an email of inquiry/interest as soon as possible to Dr. Ross Dixon ( ) with your CV/resume and unofficial transcript. Pre-application informal discussions (phone/zoom) with Dr. Dixon can be scheduled for December and January. Complete applications to the university are due by January 30 for priority review for this position, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. GREs are welcome but not required. Applications from candidates who are members of underrepresented or marginalized communities are strongly encouraged!

Required preparation: BS or MS in Meteorology, Climatology, Earth Science, or a related discipline; coursework in mathematics, physics, and fundamental atmospheric dynamics, proficiency in English.

Desired preparation: advanced coursework in atmospheric and/or climate dynamics; experience with numerical modeling, spatial analysis, and/or analysis of large datasets; scientific creativity and motivation; prior academic, research, or extracurricular experiences showing the ability to work both independently and collaboratively towards a goal.

Enrollment is anticipated to begin on August 16th, 2022. Degree will be an MS or PhD in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Full funding of tuition, stipend, and benefits is available through this research assistantship for two years, but continued funding is contingent upon satisfactory performance of the student. The student will move to Lincoln, NE and may receive a small amount of funding for relocation.

Two Post Doctoral Research Positions - Memorial University of Newfoundland

Start date for both positions: Feb 1/2022 (possibly a few weeks earlier).

Note, these positions can be done remotely. However, for non-Canadian citizens or residents, the successful application will have to first come to St. John's for about a month for work visa requirements (there may be a possibility for German residents to avoid this requirement). Applicants for both positions must be interested in working in a collaborative environment. Duties will including mentoring of PhD students working on related topics in the glacial dynamics group at Memorial University. The PDFs will be expected to present results at international conferences and workshops.

 Year salary will be about $50k CDN. PDFs at Memorial University receive standard staff benefits. Associated benefit for those who choose to work onsite: the spectacular natural environment of Newfoundland, Canada

The positions are both within the PalMod consortium project: From the Last Interglacial to the Anthropocene: Modeling a Complete Glacial Cycle.

Interested candidates should contact Lev Tarasov ( ).  Please include a full CV, contact information for references, and a statement of interest.

Position 1: 1 year Post-Doctoral Fellowship position in glacial geology and model-data comparison for the last glacial cycle North American and Eurasian ice sheet complexes.

The successful applicant will work with Professor Lev Tarasov on last glacial cycle history-matching for the North American and Eurasian ice sheet complexes. The end goal is to develop a high-variance set of glaciologically-self-consistent ice sheet chronologies to approximately bracket the actual history of ice sheet evolution, following the methodology laid out in here (building on the approach used in Tarasov et al 2012, EPSL). A related task will be to build a curated paleo-constraint database for these two ice complexes.

Applications are invited from self-motivated candidates with a deep interest in glacial Earth systems science. Applicants must have completed a PhD in physics, earth systems science, glacial geology, geophysics or closely related areas by the start of PDF. They must have a solid understanding of glacial geology, especially with respect to interpreting uncertainties in interpretation and dating.  Though they are not expected to necessarily have modelling experience, they must be computer literate, and be comfortable with data management and data visualization.

Required qualifications:

• Published record in glacial geology or related
• Solid understanding of ice sheet and paleoclimate records
• Computer literacy (ideally with with Linux/UNIX systems and shell scripting) and ability to quickly become proficient in new data processing and visualization applications
• Working understanding of statistics (ideally Bayesian inference).

Position 2: 1 year Post-Doctoral Fellowship position in glacial cycle ice and climate system interactions

Building on the work of Andres and Tarasov (2019) and Bahadory et al (2021), the PDF will closely work with one PhD student to disentangle ice and climate interactions during the last glacial cycle.

To what extent was the coupled ice and climate system robustly driven by orbital forcing? Or was there, for instance, a dominant stochastic aspect to the spatial pattern of ice sheet evolution? What were the relative roles of : changing orography, changing ocean gateways, and changing meltwater fluxes on glacial cycle evolution and shorter term variability? How did sea-ice respond and in turn feedback on the rest of the climate system? These questions will be addressed with LCice (Bahadory et al, 2018) as well with a new version using an upgraded version of the planet simulator that includes a dynamically evolving land mask.

Applications are invited from self-motivated candidates with a deep interest in Earth systems modelling/science. Applicants must have completed a PhD in physics, meteorology, physical oceanography, or closely related areas by the start of PDF. Applicants must also be interested in working on computationally intensive projects.

Required qualifications:

• published record in ocean, atmosphere, or (preferably) coupled climate system modelling with GCMs
• Solid understanding of geophysical fluid dynamics and atmospheric/ocean physics
• Experience in using F90, and analysis packages such as OCTAVE/MATLAB/R/CDO/...
• Experience with Linux/UNIX systems, shell scripting,...

Computational resources: The Glacial Dynamics group at MUN has a dedicated 770 core cluster and access to further computational resources through ACEnet and SciNet.