PhD in global climate prediction with high-resolution models (R1)

BSC-CNS

Deadline: August 1, 2024

About BSC

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.

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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.

Context And Mission

The Earth Sciences Department of Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-ES) led by Prof Francisco Doblas-Reyes develops, among other research tools, global climate models to perform a range of climate experiments at storm and eddy-resolving spatial resolutions. These tools have opened a very exciting path to revisit properties of the climate system such as climate predictability at subseasonal to decadal time scales.

This PhD vacancy aims at exploring the relative merits of the new category of global climate models of very high resolution (10 kms or higher) to predict regional aspects of climate, including the impact of the initialisation, the necessary adaptations to the experimental set up to cope with limited computational resources, and the processes that could act as new sources of forecast quality.

Key Duties

Conduct numerical simulations to estimate model predictability, analysing the sources of predictability and key model errors through a process-based perspective.
Explore the challenges that model initialisation poses at storm- and eddy-resolving resolutions.
Access and analyse the set of equivalent multi-model simulations publicly available to test the robustness of the conclusions reached.

Requirements

Education
- MSc in atmospheric, ocean or climate sciences, applied mathematics, computer sciences or any related discipline.
Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
- Knowledge of process-based climate models of either the ocean and the atmosphere; familiarity with ocean-atmosphere coupled models will be valued.
- Knowledge of climate predictability and prediction.
- Understanding of the challenges associated with the use of high-performance computers and the analysis of large databases.
Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
- Experience with version control systems (e.g., SVN or Git) will be valued.
- Experience in coding with scripting languages will be valued.
- Theoretical understanding of climate dynamics will be valued.
- Fluency in English
Competences
- Ability to prioritise tasks and work under set deadlines.
- Ability to work as part of a highly-coordinated large team.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Conditions

The position will be located at BSC within the Earth Sciences Department
We offer a full-time contract (37.5h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures
Duration: Temporary
Holidays: 23 paid vacation days plus 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement
Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona
Starting date: 01/10/2024

Applications procedure and process

All applications must be made through BSC website and contain:

A full CV in English including contact details
A Cover Letter with a statement of interest in English, including two contacts for further references – Applications without this document will not be considered
In accordance with the OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for every vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will start the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. A profile questionnaire as well as a technical exercise may be required during the process.

The panel will make a final decision and all candidates who had contacts with them will receive a feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.

At BSC we are seeking continuous improvement in our recruitment processes, for any suggestions or feedback/complaints about our Recruitment Processes, please contact recruitment@bsc.es.

Deadline

The vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired. Applications will be regularly reviewed and potential candidates will be contacted.

OTM-R principles for selection processes

BSC-CNS is committed to the principles of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment principles (OTM-R). This is applied for any potential candidate in all our processes, for example by creating gender-balanced recruitment panels and recognizing career breaks etc.
BSC-CNS is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other basis protected by applicable state or local law.