Postdoctoral Positions in Climate Modeling and Data Science in Zürich

We invite applications for one or two full-time positions at the Postdoc or Senior Postdoc level in the Climate Physics group of Prof. Reto Knutti at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich.

We are seeking physical scientists with research experience in coupled global or regional climate models, simplified Earth System models, analysis of model results, or machine learning/data science applied to environmental problems.

In this position, you will contribute to the development of robust constraints on near-future projections of climate change by integrating climate model simulations with observations using distributionally robust statistical and machine learning methods, detection, attribution and model weighting approaches, dynamical adjustment methods, nudged circulation simulations, coupled global and regional simulations and potentially new simulations using CESM2. Alternatively, novel machine learning models could enable the emulation of high-dimensional density distributions and learn from high-resolution climate model simulations to generate new plausible weather patterns at a much lower computational cost to enhance the spectrum of products in climate scenarios for Europe and Switzerland. Your research could also contribute to the fusion of observations, reanalyses, operational seasonal forecasts, initialized decadal prediction and emission-driven long-term regional and global simulations into seamless climate information covering the past, present and future. Key requirements are a consistent treatment of uncertainty across timescales and reference periods,
consideration of model performance, biases and emergent constraints, as well as relevance and accessibility to stakeholders.

Collaborations include the National Weather Service MeteoSwiss within the Swiss Climate Scenarios CH2025 project, the Swiss Data Science Center SDSC, Dr. Sebastian Sippel and Prof. Nicolai Meinshausen (statistics and machine learning) within the COPE (COnstraints on near-term warming ProjEctions via distributionally robust statistical and machine learning) project, and various group leaders working on energy and biodiversity at the six institutions of the ETH domain within the SPEED2ZERO joint initiative, as well as international partners.

You are expected to contribute to one or more of the respective projects and to take leadership in one of the research fields noted, including the supervision of students. The positions are for two years initially and can be extended subject to performance and availability of funding. The starting date is as soon as possible but can be negotiated.

• You must have a PhD in physics, climate sciences, statistics or a related subject, ideally working knowledge of climate models, and experience with shell scripting, Linux operating systems, high-performance computing, or advanced statistics and data analysis frameworks (python, R).
• Regardless of your background, you will have an interactive personality, motivation to work with cutting-edge numerical climate models and their output, the ability to carry out research in an interdisciplinary and international environment, and a strong desire to disseminate results in conference talks and journal articles.
• Fluency in English (written and spoken) and strong communication skills, in particular experience in the publication of research results in peer-reviewed journals, is required.

We offer a dynamic and inspiring research environment, excellent work conditions, supercomputing infrastructure, and a large degree of freedom for you to bring in your own research ideas and experience. The Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich is a world-leading institute in the field of research on global and regional climate change at one of the leading international universities for natural sciences and technology.