Doctoral student in Physical Geography - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The PhD student will carry out research within the project “Quantifying fossil fuel emissions based on atmospheric radiocarbon within a Fossil Fuel Data Assimilation System - 14C-FFDAS” which is a newly funded project based at the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science (INES).The research also links to the activities of the Carbon Portal of the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), a European infrastructure for measurement and analysis of greenhouse gas concentration and fluxes from ecosystems and oceans, hosted at INES. The position is embedded within the inverse modelling group at INES and there is the possibility of establishing international collaborations with colleagues in the USA, Germany and Australia.

Jobassignment

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have substantially raised the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere since the preindustrial era, leading to climate change. In the framework of the Paris Agreement countries have pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions substantially in the near future. The effectiveness of these emission reductions needs to be assessed independently.

Radiocarbon (14CO2) observations provide relevant information to estimate specifically the fossil fuel emissions, as the ratio of 14CO2 over total CO2 in the atmosphere is sensitive to the proportion of fossil carbon in the CO2 emissions. The PhD student will develop a method to use CO2 and 14CO2 observations to verify fossil-fuel CO2 emissions.

The PhD student will work with and refine an atmospheric inverse modelling system to exploit the complementary information of atmospheric radiocarbon observations for estimating fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The approach will build on the fossil fuel data assimilation system (FFDAS; Asefi-Najafabadi et al, JGR 2014) and the atmospheric transport inversion system LUMIA developed at Lund University.

A PhD student is committed to conduct independent and original scientific research, to present this research at international conferences and report on it in international scientific journals, and to publish the results of the research in a PhD dissertation, to be completed within 4 years.

Desirable skills and qualifications

• Candidates are expected to hold a university degree (preferably MSc. or equivalent) in a natural science subject such as Physical Geography and Ecosystem Analysis, Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physics or a related subject of relevance to the research

• Good numerical skills with advanced knowledge of quantitative methods and computer programming experience, as well as interest in climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, are required.

• Knowledge of FORTRAN, Python, MATLAB and previous experience working with atmospheric transport models and large environmental datasets is an important advantage.

• Experience with optimization methods, terrestrial ecosystem or fossil fuel emission models, or inverse modelling systems is an important advantage.

• Candidates must be fluent in written and spoken English.

• Candidates should have strong interest for climate science.

• We seek a well-motivated candidate who is able to work independently while contributing as part of a team.

Eligibility
Students with basic eligibility for third-cycle studies are those who

• have completed a second-cycle degree

• have completed courses of at least 240 credits, of which at least 60 credits are from second-cycle courses, or

• have acquired largely equivalent knowledge in some other way, in Sweden or abroad.

The employment of doctoral students is regulated in the Swedish Code of Statues 1998: 80. Only those who are or have been admitted to PhD-studies may be appointed to doctoral studentships. When an appointment to a doctoral studentship is made, the ability of the student to benefit from PhD-studies shall primarily be taken into account. In addition to devoting themselves to their studies, those appointed to doctoral studentships may be required to work with educational tasks, research and administration, in accordance with specific regulations in the ordinance.

Type of employment
Limit of tenure, four years according to HF 5 kap 7§.