Postdoc position at Météo-France / CNRM-GAME, Toulouse (France)

Postdoc #1
Coupling an Ice Sheet Model to an Earth System Model
This 16-month postdoc (with possible extension) is funded by two French national projects ANR/NEEM-France (4 months) and ANR/CECILE (12 months). It will take place at the Climate Modelling Group of Météo-France / CNRM-GAME, in Toulouse (France).
Expected starting date is approximately July 1st, 2011.
Applications should be sent by email to David Salas y Melia () no later than May 11th, 2011.
Net salary of the successful applicant will range from 1800 to 2700€/month, depending on experience.

General Information:

The « Centre National des Recherches Météorologiques » (CNRM) is the research center of Meteo-France, the French weather service. To carry out its missions, CNRM hosts approximately 275 permanent positions (one third being research scientists), and about 60 students and visitors, working in specialised divisions. The climate group, GMGEC, is one of these divisions. Its main specific research activities concern the development of climate models, the studies of climate variability and change at global and regional scales, of long-range forecasting, of atmospheric chemistry and of ocean-air interactions.

The projects:

ANR/CECILE is a French National project focused on sea level rise. Within CECILE, the impact of coupling an ice sheet model to CNRM-CM5 global coupled climate model on 21st century sea-level rise will be studied. More: http://www.anr-cecile.fr/

ANR/NEEM-France is a French contribution to the international project NEEM National project (see http://neem.nbi.ku.dk/). Part of NEEM-France is devoted to ice sheet modelling. More: http://www.lsce.ipsl.fr/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast_visu.php?id_ast=102

Description of work:

As a first step, the successful applicant will couple an existing ice-sheet model (GRISLI: Antarctic and Greenland) with the fifth version of the IPCC/CMIP model CNRM-CM (see http://www.cnrm-game.fr/spip.php?article126&lang=en for more details). Then he/she will refine this coupling by using SURFEX/Crocus snow model and will use a scheme that represents underlying ice, providing a more accurate estimate of the surface mass balance of the ice sheet. The behaviour of the surface ice-snow model will be assessed through a comparison with observational data. The successful applicant will run sensitivity experiments to estimate the impact of these development on the simulated climate and ocean circulation, and estimate the contribution of ice sheet mass balance changes to global sea level rise and regional sea level rise patterns. This work will be carried out in a highly collaborative framework (particularly with the host team GMGEC/ASTER, see http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/gmgec/spip.php?article116&lang=en, but also with Cerfacs, LGGE-Grenoble and IPSL-Paris). Hence the ability of applicants to work efficiently in a team is regarded as essential. All the simulations will be performed on a NEC-SX8.

Required qualifications

The candidates should hold PhD degrees and experience in climate research and/or cryospheric science. Experience in working with complex models on super-computers, in analyses of large climate data sets is necessary. Good programming skills (especially FORTRAN90, Unix shell) are required. Knowledge of CDAT/Python, Ferret or NCL is an advantage. Fluency in English is necessary.

Applicants should send to :

[1] a curriculum vitae (including research experience, publications and conferences, computing skills and different language practice…)

[2] a brief statement of research interests

[3] names and contact details (email + telephone number) of three referees