Volume 25 No. 5

– January 26, 2021

Employment & Opportunities

Professorship in Hydrogeology - University of Basil

The Department of Environmental Sciences at the Faculty of Science (DUW), University of Basel, jointly with the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship or a tenured associate professorship in Hydrogeology.

The new professor will be expected to develop and strengthen an internationally visible research program in hydrogeological sciences within the Department of Environmental Sciences (http://duw.unibas.ch) and Eawag (https://www.eawag.ch/en/), on topics related to the sustainable use of water resources, groundwater protection on different spatial scales, and/or hydrological aspects of urban environments. They specifically seek candidates who combine novel field and modelling approaches to study transport processes/hydrodynamics in groundwater aquifers, with a strong background in applied geology and geochemistry, and interest also in regional hydrogeological aspects. Research activities may focus on reactive transport modelling and the development and application of innovative tracers in hydrogeological studies, contamination of aquifers, aspects of groundwater renewal processes and surface/groundwater interactions, ecohydrological aspects, and/or the management of water and other resources in groundwater aquifers.

The professorship is located at Basel, but will be jointly affiliated with the Department of Water Resources and Drinking water at Eawag in Dübendorf, providing access to Eawag's facilities and resources. The new professor will head the Applied and Environmental Geology service unit (AUG) within the DUW. Interest in scientific collaboration with local authorities is highly desired.

The future professor is expected to teach both at the undergraduate and graduate level at the University of Basel, and to help expand and further develop the curriculum within the geoscience programs at the department.

Requirements
Applicants should hold a PhD in Hydrogeology, Geology, or a related field, and have an excellent track record of research activities and publications. We particularly welcome applications by candidates with experience in a range of different hydrogeological approaches and able to combine applied and basic hydrogeological research with other environmental sciences in an interdisciplinary context.

Application Instructions
Applications (including CV, a list of publications, a letter of motivation, and a statement of research and teaching interests) should be addressed to Prof. Dr. Marcel Mayor, Dean of the Faculty of Science, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 50, 4056 Basel, Switzerland and submitted online as one single PDF, through this link.

Requests for further information may be addressed to: Prof. Dr. Moritz Lehmann, Head of the Department of Environmental Science, University of Basel ( )

The deadline for receipt of applications is 28 February 2021.

1 project manager & 12 postdocs: Machine Learning for Ocean/Atm/Sea-ice Modeling - M²LInES

One project manager and twelve postdocs are available to be a part of a new exciting international collaboration, M²LInES: Multiscale Machine Learning In coupled Earth System Modeling, with climate and data scientists from New York University, Princeton, GFDL, Columbia, LDEO, NCAR, MIT, CNRS-IGE, and CNRS-IPSL.

The overall goal of the project is to improve climate projections and reduce climate model biases, especially at the air-sea interface, using machine learning (ML). They will rely on data from a range of high-resolution (idealized and global) simulations and data assimilation products to deepen our understanding and improve the representation of subgrid physics in the ocean, sea-ice and atmosphere components of existing IPCC-class climate models. In addition, they will work on overcoming challenges related to ML for climate modeling including sampling efficiency, generalization, interpretability and uncertainty quantification.

This is a highly collaborative project, and the researchers are expected to interact with different groups. Visit this link for more info about the different positions available, and how to apply.

News & Events

EOAS Colloquium: Thom Laepple

Title: Beyond mean climate change: Using paleoclimate archives to better constrain climate variability

Date & Time: Thursday, January 28th at 11:00am

Place: Zoom Room!

Abstract:

In order to adapt to the changing climate, not only changes in the mean climate state but also the magnitude and change of climate variability have to be known.

Whereas variations on weather to interannual time-scales in the climate system are well documented and current climate models are generally able to simulate them realistically, much less is known about the amplitude and the mechanisms of natural climate variability on longer time-scales, e.g. between decades and centuries. Estimating that variability is the basis for the detection and attribution of the anthropogenic component, determines the range of plausible future climate changes and also provides information about the time-scales of the earth system components. Paleo-climate archives (‘proxies’) such as ice-core and marine sediment records can provide long records of the past climate evolution and thus provide the needed information about climate variability. However, they are sparse, inherently noisy and at times provide contradictory evidence. This hampered quantitative reconstructions off climate variability and systematic testing of the variability simulated from climate models. In the last years, several advances have been made to better extract climate variability estimates from climate archives. These include a better understanding how climate archives record the climate signal based on lab and field studies, proxy system models simulating this recording process as well as novel statistical techniques tailored to separate climate from noise components.

Based on these advances we were able to improve our understanding of the present climate variability as well as to provide first estimates how climate variability responds to a changing climate.

In this presentation, I will discuss recent advances in the toolbox of teasing out climate variability from marine, lake and ice-core based climate archives and show recent results quantifying interannual to millenial temperature variability on the ocean and on land.

Department of Physics & Astronomy Colloquium: Steven Vance

Title: Europa’s Potentially Habitable Interior: Layered and Asymmetric Magnetic Induction

Date & Time: Monday, February 1st at 3:00pm