Stillingstittel: PhD Research Fellowship in Carbon Cycle Modeling

Stillingsbeskrivelse:
The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest institution of research and education with 28 000 students and 7000 employees. Its broad range of academic disciplines and internationally esteemed research communities make UiO an important contributor to society.

A PhD position is available at the Department of Geosciences, Section for Geography and Hydrology. The fellowship will be for a period of 3 years, with no compulsory work or for a period of 4 years, with 25 % compulsory work (teaching responsibilities at the department) contingent on the qualifications of the candidate and the teaching needs of the department. Starting date no later than 1 October, 2016. No one can be appointed for more than one fixed-term period at the same institution.

The candidate will work in the LATICE (“Land-ATmosphere Interactions in Cold Environments”) research group, together with scientists with expertise on permafrost, hydrology, vegetation, and atmospheric modeling. LATICE is a strategic research area by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo dedicated to improving our knowledge on cold environment processes and their representation in Earth System Models (ESMs). Permafrost is one of the key topics, with strong focus on process modeling, remote sensing methods and field measurements.

The candidate will be part of a motivated research team with a high number of early career scientists working together in an interdisciplinary environment. Current research projects on permafrost include COUP, SatPerm, ESA GlobPermafrost, CryoWall and the newly funded PERMANOR dedicated to scaling of permafrost processes from plot to ESM scale. A common approach of all projects is to tightly integrate field observations in model development, and the candidate is expected to participate in the various field activities of the group. From Oslo, we have fast and easy access to field sites in Svalbard and Northern Scandinavia (e.g. degrading peat plateaus), while we are also active in a number of other areas, e.g. Mongolia. Our main model platforms are the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the CryoGrid permafrost models, which we use to develop and test parameterizations for a variety of permafrost processes that can later be included in the WRF framework.

Job description

The candidate will be involved in the development of a physically-based carbon cycling model within CryoGrid, including a representation of different carbon isotopes. The main idea is to retrace the steps of a carbon atom from the uptake by plants via the storage in frozen ground to the release as part of a methane or carbon dioxide molecule to the atmosphere. The candidate will review existing model approaches and parameterizations for different “sub-problems”, e.g. photosynthetic activity, soil respiration, soil gas transport or permafrost carbon pool decomposition, and benchmark them against field and laboratory observations. The final model will be integrated in CryoGrid and tested for different permafrost landscapes, with focus on the effects of ground thermal regime, hydrology, snow cover and vegetation. For upscaling from point to landscape scale, the candiate will closely collaborate with LATICE and PERMANOR scientists who specifically address scaling procedures for veg

Minstelønn: 0

Maksimal lønn: 0

Arbeidsgiver Navn: Universitetet i Oslo, Department of Geos

Arbeidsgiver adresse: 0313 OSLO

Job kort beskrivelse: Geologists and geophysicists

Land: Norge

Region: Oslo

Kilde til jobbtilbud: NAV, Offentlige arbeidsformidlinger, Norge

Lønn valuta: NOK

Lønn periode: Pr. år