[Met-jobs] NERC funded Research Assistant post + phd studentship at LSE

[<L.Grove@lse.ac.uk>]

Please find below details of a NERC Research Assistant post and PhD studentship 
available at the LSE (Centre for the Analysis of Time Series/Department of 
Statistics and Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the 
Environment):

Research Assistant   from £26,194 - £30,343     (Ref: RES/09/10)
Fixed term to 31st December 2012 
Applications are invited for the position of research assistant on a NERC 
funded research project "End-to-end Quantification of Uncertainty for Impacts 
Prediction" (EQUIP), a collaborative project involving eleven UK Universities 
and research institutions. 
The appointee will work on new approaches for extracting decision-relevant 
information from climate models. He/she will work closely with users of 
climate, and climate model, information both within the EQUIP project and 
beyond in the insurance, water and energy sectors. 
Activities will include:
* the identification and evaluation of existing methods to account for climate 
variability and change in the decision making process,
* the development of new methods for determining the decision relevant 
information content of climate models in a variety of user-determined 
applications,
* the development of methods for combining information from climate models, 
data-driven models and process understanding to support user-defined decisions, 
and
* the development of new approaches to the design of ensemble prediction 
systems that focus on information content and utility.
The appointee will be based in the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series in 
the Department of Statistics at the London School of Economics. Statistical 
methods for the identification of robust and relevant information will form the 
core of the work. The appointee will work closely with statisticians, 
physicists, specialists in climate change impacts and adaptation, and users of 
climate information. There will be close collaboration with other researchers 
in the EQUIP project across the UK as well as with members of CATS and the 
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE.
Candidates should have a PhD or equivalent in statistics, mathematics, computer 
science, physics or a related discipline. Programming skills and experience in 
data processing and analysis are required. Previous experience in climate 
science, non-linear systems and decision making would be beneficial. 
Meteorological expertise would be a bonus. 
Further details of the project can be found at: 
http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earac/equip.html#Vacancies 
<http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/%7Eearac/equip.html#Vacancies> 

A full application pack can be obtained at www.lse.ac.uk/jobsatLSE  If you 
cannot download the pack, email hr.recruit.res@lse.ac.uk  or call 0207 955 7859 
quoting the relevant reference number above.
Closing date for receipt of applications: 7th December 2009. Interviews are 
expected to take place in January 2010. 
 

Postgraduate Studentship: Relating Climate Models and Reality 
A NERC funded PhD studentship is currently available at the Centre for the 
Analysis of Time Series and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change 
and the Environment. 
The student will study the relationship between models and reality in the 
context of climate change. The research will work towards the design of 
ensemble experiments which can evaluate the spatial and temporal scales on 
which complex climate models can potentially provide quantitative information 
about the future real world climate. In constructing such a design the student 
will use simple non-linear systems, and simple and intermediate complexity 
climate models. On weather forecasting timescales techniques have been 
developed to quantify how long a model can remain close to, shadow, 
observations. Here the aim is to look at the application of such techniques to 
climate and climate change, to illustrate and refine the methods with simple 
models, and to work towards an experimental design which may be applicable to 
complex climate models, probably within the context of a distributed computing 
methodology. Such an approach has the potential to clarify where and how model 
based forecasts can add value to real world decisions and to guide and evaluate 
the improvement of climate models. The studentship is part of a wider project 
attempting to quantify the likelihood of a shut down in the Meridional 
Overturning Circulation (MOC) in the North Atlantic. If appropriate models of 
the MOC will form part of the research. 
The project will be supervised by David Stainforth and Leonard Smith. 
The studentship is available from February 2010.  It is funded by the Natural 
Environment Research Council and in order to be eligible for full fees and 
living allowance students must meet the UK residency requirement. EU citizens 
who do not meet this requirement may still apply for a fees only award. 
To apply please send your CV and covering letter explaining your interest and 
expertise relevant to this subject to Lyn Grove, l.grove@lse.ac.uk
Closing date for applications for the PhD studentship is 30th November 2009
Short-listed candidates will be invited to attend an informal interview and if 
successful advised about making a formal application to LSE.




With regards
Lyn

Lyn Grove| Centre Manager | Centre for the Analysis of Time Series (CATS) 
& Munich Re Programme Administrator | Centre for Climate Change Economics and 
Policy 
within the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment 
London School of Economics and Political Science
Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 6015  |  Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7416
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/cats/
http://www.cccep.ac.uk/Default.htm


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