Do you have a background in tropical meteorology, dynamical meteorology, convection, climate and weather model evaluation, or a related field?  Do you want to further your career in one of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities?

IMPROVE (Indian Monsoon PRecipitation over Orography: Verification and Enhancement of understanding) is a collaborative project between University of Leeds and the University of Reading and is funded under the Met Office Weather and Climate Science for Services Partnership (WCSSP) India Programme and led by University of Reading. The project’s institutional lead at Leeds is Jennifer Fletcher, working with Co-Investigators Andrew Ross and Stephen Griffiths (School of Maths). The post-holder will join a team of researchers in the IMPROVE project at University of Leeds and University of Reading.

The Indian monsoon supplies around 80% of annual rainwater to more than a billion people in South Asia. This rainfall is not uniformly distributed, and the heaviest seasonal rainfall — and many of the worst flooding events — occurs on the windward side of mountain ranges. As the post-holder you will use observational, numerical, and theoretical methods to improve understanding of orographic rainfall over India. You will evaluate the Met Office Unified Model (MetUM) performance in representing rainfall over mountainous regions in India, analysing simulations of both typical and extreme rainfall events. You will use the MetUM and high resolution simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to diagnose the key mechanisms associated with orographic rainfall and evaluate whether they are missing in the MetUM.

You will be joining one of the most research active universities for atmospheric science in the UK (Leeds is rated 7^th in the world on the Shanghai global rankings for atmospheric science, and 1^st in the UK). Within the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Institute for Atmospheric Science (ICAS), you will be joining a large group of tropical meteorologists and dynamicists, who together have an outstanding track record on India, the tropics and convection. Together with the opportunity to work with world-leading scientists in Reading, UEA, Edinburgh, and India, this provides an excellent opportunity for an individual with a long-term interest in this field. 

You will have a PhD (or close to obtaining) in a quantitative physical science, such as Atmospheric Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics or Meteorology, and have experience in dynamical and/or tropical meteorology. You will be experienced in the analysis of large observational and/or numerical model datasets within a programming language such as NCL or Python, have excellent communication skills and a willingness to travel to India.

To explore the post further or for any queries you may have, please contact:

Jennifer Fletcher, Senior Research Scientist 

Tel: +44 (0)113 343 3389, email: j.k.fletcher@leeds.ac.uk

Location:  Leeds - Main Campus
Faculty/Service:  Faculty of Environment
School/Institute:  School of Earth and Environment
Category:  Research
Grade:  Grade 7
Salary:  £33,199 to £39,609 p.a.  
Due to funding restrictions this post will not be appointed at higher than £38,460 p.a.
Working Time:  100% - Job share and flexible working arrangements will be considered
Post Type:  Full Time
Contract Type:  Fixed Term (for 18 months due to external funding)
Closing Date:  Friday 06 September 2019
Downloads:  Candidate Brief