Post-doctoral Researcher in Venus Global Climate Modelling

An exciting opportunity for a postdoctoral research position (up to three years) is available at The Open University, UK, to develop and perform experiments with a Venus Global Climate Model in preparation for future missions.

The role is an exciting combination of numerical modelling to simulate global climate environment of the atmosphere of Venus, and comparison to spacecraft observation data.  Our aim is to develop a new climate model of Venus to identify the most likely cause of the observed sporadic high-altitude occurrences of atmospheric sulfur species and determine the likelihood of a direct link to surface geological activity.  This work is to be performed in preparation of several high-profile missions to Venus in the 2030s, from both NASA and ESA.

The role holder will join a vibrant atmospheric research group within the School of Physical Sciences, making use of the group’s high-performance computing facility based in the STEM Faculty.

The preferred candidate will have a PhD (or close to completion) in atmospheric physics or a closely related field, with knowledge and experience of numerical modelling of planetary atmospheres.  The salary within the specified range will be dependent on PhD award status and commensurate with the level of experience to date.

For more information, please see the job advert at https://www.open.ac.uk/about/employment/vacancies/post-doctoral-research-associate-venus-global-climate-modelling-20724.  Applications will be accepted until 24th February, 12pm UK time.

Tytle:  Tackling Venus atmosphere from different approaches: theory-modelling, observations and space missions Reference of the FPI contract CEX2021-001131-S-20-1

Centre:  Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía - CSIC

Type:  Predoctoral

Description:

Venus is in the spotlight of the public and scientific community after the selection of 3 missions:  DAVINCI and VERITAS by NASA and EnVision by ESA/NASA. It remains an open question how  Venus and the Earth started so similarly but become such different worlds. Thus, studying Venus is essential for understanding the links between planetary evolution and the habitability of terrestrial planets,  including those outside our Solar System. Several Earth-sized exoplanets have been recently detected in short-period orbits of a few Earth days around low-mass stars. Those planets have stellar irradiation levels several times that of the Earth, suggesting that a Venus-like climate is more likely than an  Earth-like. Consequently, the atmosphere of our closest planet Venus represents a relevant case to address observational prospects of rocky close-in orbit exoplanets.

The successful candidate will be in particular involved in EnVision mission, notably, he/she will join the international consortium of the high-resolution spectrographs VenSpec-H and VenSpec- U. She/he will use a sophisticated 3D model for Venus that has been developed since 2010 at LMD/IPSL in France, in the frame of a collaboration between different European institutions, including IAA-CSIC, to analyze and identify potential physical, chemical, or dynamical processes driving the variability of trace gases above the cloud tops of Venus (70 km altitude, approximately). Heterogenous chemical processes will be implemented and studied, and the impact of complex cloud models and scenarios on the water and sulphur species will be interpreted. These model developments will also contribute to the Venus Climate database (VCD), an online platform containing the meteorological fields derived from the Venus 3D Model and provides the scientific community with a climatology for many characteristics of the Venusian atmosphere from the surface to the exosphere, in addition, a similar but simplified condensation cloud model will be implemented into a  “Generic” 3D model, developed for exoplanets and paleoclimate studies, to simulate H2SO4-H2O clouds  “interactively” in the atmosphere of Venus-analogues around both Sun-like and M-dwarf stars, with the primary goal of providing realistic predictions of future observations of cloudy rocky exoplanets foreseen by the Webb Space Telescope and new-generation instruments and facilities (e.g. ELT).

The PhD thesis advisors will be Gabriella Gilli and Luisa M. Lara

Tytle: 3 PhD positions in IA-Porto for exoplanets

Centre:Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço

Type:  Predoctoral

Description:

The positions are offered in the context of the project "FIERCE: Finding Exoearths: tackling the challenges of stellar activity" funded by the European Research Council under an Advanced Grant with the reference 101052347. The work will be developed at CAUP (in the Porto node of the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço), under the scientific supervision of Nuno C. Santos and/or other members of the scientific team of IA.

Fellowship duration: Each fellowship should start between the 1st of September and the 1st of October 2023, renewable on a yearly basis, and has a maximum duration of 48 months

Work plan: The detection and characterisation of other Earths, planets with the physical conditions to hold liquid water and thus potential life-sustaining environments, is a bold objective of present-day astrophysics. This goal continuously pushes the development of new ground- and space-based instrumentation. However, the quest for other Earths is severely limited by astrophysical “noise” from the host stars, whose signatures distort the spectra used to detect and characterize the planets.

The PhD projects, offered in the context of one Advanced Grant funded by the European Research Council, are related with the development of new methods and analysis tools to tackle the problem of stellar noise in exoplanet research. In particular we expect the successful candidates to contribute to the development and exploitation of data from the PoET solar telescope and ESPRESSO spectrograph (ESO) to:

1) develop new approaches to reach the 10 cm/s barrier in Doppler radial velocity measurements needed to find and characterize other Earths orbiting other Suns;

2) model and correct stellar noise in transmission spectroscopy used to study exoplanet atmospheres.

Exoplanet data obtained with the ESPRESSO and NIRPS (ESO) spectrographs may also be made available.

The projects will have a strong impact on the exploitation of data from future ground-based projects and space-based missions such as ANDES@ELT (ESO) and PLATO (ESA).