Vacant job

Lund University was founded in 1666 and is consistently ranked among the world's leading universities. There are approximately 46,000 students and 8,500 staff members in Lund, Helsingborg, and Malmö. We are united in our strive to understand, explain, and improve our world and the conditions of human life.

Description of the Activity

The position is located at the Division of Combustion Physics, Department of Physics, Lund University, within the stratospheric aerosol research group led by Docent Johan Friberg. The division hosts research groups working within a broad spectrum of applied physics and optical diagnostics, including laser-based measurement techniques, combustion, and atmospheric science. This environment offers a stimulating and technically diverse workplace where expertise in optics and light-matter interaction is central — a natural home for research based on satellite lidar, which is fundamentally an application of laser remote sensing.

The doctoral student will become part of an active research environment with postdocs and senior researchers with expertise in satellite-based remote sensing, atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, and climate modeling. The group is part of the strategic research environment MERGE (Modelling the Regional and Global Earth system) and LTH's profile area Aerosols, providing access to a broad network of researchers at Lund University.

The project involves collaboration with leading international research groups and institutions, giving the doctoral student the opportunity to engage with the global research community in stratospheric aerosol research early in their studies.

Being a Doctoral Student

As a doctoral student, you are both admitted as a student and employed by Lund University.

As a research student, you are trained in a scientific approach. This can be briefly described as gaining practice in thinking critically and analytically, solving problems independently using appropriate methods, and developing research ethics awareness. Additionally, doctoral students are given the opportunity to work on projects, develop leadership skills, and enhance pedagogical abilities. Throughout your studies, you are guided by supervisors. The doctoral studies conclude with a thesis and a doctoral degree.

More about being a doctoral student at LTH can be found at lth.se.

Subject and Project Description

Doctoral Project: How Much Cooling Are We Missing? Space Lasers for Better Climate Projections

Every major volcanic eruption and large-scale forest fire is a natural experiment in climate impact — they inject millions of tons of particles into the stratosphere that shade the planet and temporarily cool the climate. This doctoral project focuses on the stratosphere, specifically on understanding how volcanic eruptions and wildfires affect stratospheric aerosols and what this means for the climate. Accurately quantifying these effects is crucial for reliable climate projections — and there is still significant potential to better utilize the unique perspective that satellite lidar offers within the multi-instrument climatologies for stratospheric aerosol used in international climate model comparisons.

A satellite lidar such as CALIOP — fundamentally a laser fired from orbit — offers a fundamentally different and complementary view of stratospheric aerosols compared to other satellite techniques. This project will utilize a unique 17-year dataset from CALIOP to critically evaluate and improve how lidar observations of stratospheric aerosol are currently included in multi-instrument climatologies, as well as to produce refined lidar-based estimates of stratospheric aerosol loading and its climate impact for use in the next generation of international climate model intercomparison projects (CMIP). The goal is to create a richer and more complete picture of how volcanic eruptions and wildfires load the stratosphere with aerosols and the resulting cooling of Earth's climate.

Beyond this primary goal, the project opens up to a broader scientific exploration of the stratosphere. The group's research spans several aspects of stratospheric composition and its climate relevance, including trace gas measurements that complement aerosol measurements, as well as the development of new data products from ATLID — the lidar instrument on ESA's recently launched EarthCARE satellite, which applies a new generation of spaceborne laser remote sensing to stratospheric aerosol research. There will be opportunities to contribute to and benefit from these and other parallel research threads within our group.

The project sits at the intersection of satellite remote sensing and climate science, and you will work in a team spanning both worlds — satellite data analysts and climate modelers — as part of broader research efforts at Lund University. If you want your doctoral degree to leave a measurable mark on how the research community quantifies one of the most important natural climate drivers on Earth, this is the project for you.

Job Responsibilities

You will primarily focus on your doctoral education, which includes participation in research projects, doctoral courses, seminars, and conferences.

The responsibilities include:

• You will have specific responsibility for analyzing high-resolution satellite lidar data to quantify how well current climate simulations capture the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions and large wildfires.
• You will present your results at international scientific conferences and participate in the ClimBEco doctoral school (www.cec.lu.se/climbeco-graduate-research-school). The position includes travel to international conferences.
• The duties also include participation in teaching and other departmental activities up to a maximum of 20% of working time.

For the full advertisement please see: https://lu.varbi.com/what:job/jobID:943899/ (https://lu.varbi.com/what:job/jobID:943899/)