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PhD studentship on Short-Lived Climate Forcers in the Arctic

Based at Laboratoire Atmospheres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), Paris, France,

in collaboration with School of Earth and Environment, U. Leeds, U.K.

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Applications are sought for a PhD studentship on Arctic Short-Lived Climate Forcers (SLCFs) before 8 May 2020.

The Arctic is undergoing unprecedented fast warming. In addition to the forcing of increasing CO2 concentrations, Arctic climate change is also driven by changes in important Short-Lived Climate Forcers (SLCFs) including methane, tropospheric ozone and a variety of anthropogenic aerosols. As well as direct radiative effects, aerosols can also impact climate via indirect effects such as aerosol-cloud interactions or BC deposited on snow/ice. Significant uncertainties still surround our ability to quantify these impacts due to uncertainties in our knowledge about the contributions of different sources, processing during transport from remote source regions to the Arctic, and loss processes such as wet and dry deposition. As well as anthropogenic sources transported from mid-latitude emission regions or emitted locally in the Arctic, boreal fires represent a significant high-latitude source of SLCFs with large uncertainties. 

We seek an enthusiastic student, who will use a regional chemical-aerosol model, WRF-Chem, to study the sources, transport, processing and impacts of SLCFs on Arctic climate and on regional air pollution with a focus on the spring and summer. The model will be run using recent/new emission inventories, and results will be evaluated using existing ground-based, aircraft and satellite data over source regions and the Arctic. The sensitivity of model results to different emission data, in particular for boreal fires, will also be investigated, and used to diagnose the contributions from anthropogenic sources and boreal fires to abundances and distributions of aerosols and ozone in the Arctic, as well as their impacts. The model will also be used to examine future scenarios including possible changes in anthropogenic and fire emissions.

As part of the project regional model simulations, including WRF-Chem, will be compared to global model simulations, using the UK Earth System Model, and new fire emission datasets are being developed. Research carried out as part of this PhD will also contribute to the international initiative PACES (air Pollution in the Arctic: Climate, Environment and Societies  - http://www.igacproject.org/PACES  and to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) work on SLCFs. The PhD will be jointly supervised between LATMOS and U. Leeds. The TROPO group in LATMOS has been working for several years on long-range transport of pollution to the Arctic (e.g. see Law et al., BAMS, 2014), and local Arctic pollution (Law et al., Ambio, 2017). The School of Earth and Environment at University of Leeds actively contributes to research on global and regional air quality and climate change, including the roles of aerosols and tropospheric ozone.

Applications are invited from Masters students in environmental or atmospheric sciences.  Some knowledge of computer programming (Fortran, Unix, Python/IDL/Matlab/NCL, shell script), data analysis, running models and written/spoken English is desirable. If interested please send your CV including email addresses of 3 referees to Kathy.Law@latmos.ipsl.fr and S.Arnold@leeds.ac.uk. 

**Important** Please note that there is a selection procedure – the candidate selected for this PhD topic will have to submit a full application to the French PhD School ED129 by 28 May. Due to the limited number of student grants available, panel interviews will then take place end-June/beg. July 2020 (see http://www.ed129.upmc.fr/fr/allocations-et-bourses/financements-de-l-ed-129.html).

The PhD student will be based at LATMOS on Jussieu campus of Sorbonne University, central Paris (http://www.latmos.ipsl.fr/index.php/en/ and http://ifd.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/the-doctorate-at-upmc.html). LATMOS is also part of the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) (http://www.ipsl.fr/).  For University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment see - https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/see