PhD -resolution modelling of past warmer climates

We invite applicants for a 4-year PhD position in research project PAST, funded by the Dutch Research Council.

Project PAST, “A proxy-model alliance to decode storms in warmer climates”, aims to quantify the occurrence of storms over western Europe during warmer climates. Climate change is known to increase the risk to societies and ecosystems from extreme weather events. But these short-lived events are notoriously hard to reconstruct and to model, so our understanding of their behaviour during warmer climates is limited.

To learn from past warmer climates and better understand the link between climate and extremes, we can use proxy-based climate reconstructions and climate models for past warmer climates. However, the temporal and spatial resolutions of these have so far been inadequate.

PAST overcomes this obstacle, both from the side of proxy reconstructions and of climate modelling. It develops the first reconstructions of storms in the geological past using fossil shells. In parallel, it produces new, high-resolution computer models of the warm Last Interglacial period. Finally, PAST creates new knowledge by synthesising these two approaches through advanced statistics.

This PhD project is one of two within PAST. As a PhD candidate your goal is to conduct new climate model simulations of the Last Interglacial, with a state-of-the-art climate model (CESM). From these results, you analyse patterns of Atlantic storminess. The Last Interglacial is the most recent climate that was warmer than the present in the Northern Hemisphere. This makes it a unique analogue of the warmer climate of the coming decades.

As a researcher in PAST, you execute model simulations at very high resolution on the Dutch supercomputer Snellius. This is novel research for this paleo climate. Your key challenge is to design and implement a clever set of simulations. This will systematically address the key sources of uncertainty regarding climate and storminess in the Northern Hemisphere during the Last Interglacial. For this, you leverage the most recent knowledge about this paleo climate, and collaborate with leading international climate researchers at Utrecht University (NL) and at NCAR (USA).

Throughout the project, you work closely with the other PhD candidate of PAST, who creates high-resolution proxy-based reconstructions of the same paleo climate. Together, you apply a Bayesian statistical framework to contrast and combine data across reconstructions and model results. This will enhance our understanding of the link between climate and extreme weather in Western Europe. The insights from modelling and proxy-model synthesis will be impactful in a range of climate-related disciplines.

• you design a set of climate model simulations, addressing the key sources of uncertainty of storminess in a warmer climate
• you execute simulations on the Dutch supercomputer Snellius
• you analyse patterns of storminess and other key climate extremes in the results
• you synthesize results from model and proxies through Bayesian statistics
• you present your research at scientific conferences and publish your results in scientific journals
• you contribute to teaching and supervising in bachelor and master programs