A 3-years postdoctoral position is open at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California to join the team to work on SWOT-related oceanography projects. The researcher will participate in deployment /recovery cruises of a network of moorings of the NOPP project “A Distributed Network of Internal Wave Resolving Moored Arrays for Assessing Tide-Resolving Model Fields and Improving Forecasts in the Coastal Ocean” and then will analyze the collected in-situ data comparing them to the SWOT observations collected during the 90-day fast sampling phase.
The SWOT oceanography team at JPL/NASA is looking for a postdoctoral researcher to work on a three-year National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) project in collaboration with scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Scripps Oceanographic Institution (SIO). This NOPP project is titled “A Distributed Network of Internal Wave Resolving Moored Arrays for Assessing Tide-Resolving Model Fields and Improving Forecasts in the Coastal Ocean”. The project will deploy an Internal Wave Resolving (IWR) Array of CPIES and ADCP moorings, and address scientific topics such as internal gravity wave processes, (smaller) mesoscale eddy dynamics and/or wave-eddy interactions in both the in-situ and the SWOT measurements.
The first year CPIES deployment will be conducted jointly with the SWOT post-launch field campaign at the SWOT mission calibration and validation site in the California Current. The motivated candidate is encouraged to participate in the deployment/recovery cruises supervised by experienced sea-going scientists from WHOI and SIO, and analyze the collected in-situ data. The work in the second and third year involves potential additional cruises, comparing in-situ observations and SWOT measurements collected during the 90-day fast sampling phase, and understanding the utility of SWOT measurement in studying internal wave propagation, internal wave processes and energetics.
The work will be carried out in close collaboration with a sister NOPP project “Diagnosis and Validation of the Time and Spatial Variability of Remotely Generated Internal Waves in Global Ocean Simulations” conducted jointly by University of Southern Mississippi (USM), the University of Michigan (U-M), and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). While near-field internal waves are reasonably well measured and simulated, our knowledge of far-field internal waves is lacking. The sister NOPP project will use the IWR and SWOT data to validate global ocean simulations and improve the understanding of internal wave processes. The generation, propagation, and dissipation of remote internal waves is relevant for predicting coastal processes in regional simulations, the de-tiding of SWOT measurements, ocean acoustics, and water-mass mixing, which impacts ocean circulation and ultimately the Earth’s climate.
The candidate will work within a dynamic team that has a full spectrum of expertise in high-resolution modelling and data assimilation, in-situ observations, satellite remote sensing (SWOT), and theory.
Qualifications:
- Applicants must have a Ph.D. in physical oceanography or a similar field.
- Applicants must also have a publication record that illustrates the ability to conduct and communicate independent research as well as experience and proficiency in working with observations, model output, coding, time series analysis, and a good understanding of the ocean dynamics especially internal wave processes and wave-eddy interactions.
Questions: send an email to advisor Dr. Jinbo Wang at Jinbo.Wang@jpl.nasa.gov.
Closing date for applications: 15 November 2022.