Open Phd Positions In Atmospheric/Climate Science (Land-Climate Dynamics)

Title:Phd Positions In Atmospheric/Climate Science (Land-Climate Dynamics)

Location:Switzerland

Organization’s profile:

The group for land-climate dynamics at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, ETH Zürich has several openings for positions within the ERC Consolidator Grant DROUGHT-HEAT project.

Job Description:

The project aims at improving our understanding of processes that govern land-climate interactions, in particular with respect to the occurrence of extreme events such as droughts and heatwaves. The project integrates the newest observational land datasets with the latest stream of Earth System Models (ESMs). Novel methodologies will be applied to extract unknown functional relationships from the data, and to identify gaps in the representation of processes in ESMs.

Eligibility:

The PhD positions will address the following main research questions (within WP1): PhD 1: How sensitive are ecosystems to (soil moisture) drought, how do these relationships vary in space and time, and what are the resulting impacts on moisture, energy and carbon fluxes, and the atmosphere? PhD 2: How sensitive are temperature extremes to land surface conditions, including soil moisture levels, evaporative fraction, albedo and land cover type? The desired qualifications for the PhD students are: Master degree in climate and/or environmental sciences, physics, statistics, computational sciences or a closely related discipline; experience with a higher programming language (e.g. R, Matlab); fluency in English; good communication skills; interest in land-climate dynamics.

How to apply:

For more information and to apply, click here

Last Date for the application:

26 May, 2014

Reference: http://www.iac.ethz.ch/groups/seneviratne