Senior Research Associate in Hydroclimatic Extremes and Causal Pathways

Newcastle University

Newcastle, United Kingdom

GBP 48,337 - 51,258 per year

The Role

The EXTREME-FUTURES project will develop a seamless framework for predicting hydroclimatic extremes by connecting global climate drivers, regional weather regimes and extreme events across weather-to-climate timescales. The project focuses on persistent and connected extremes, including heatwaves, floods, storms and compound events, and will combine causal inference, feature tracking, observations and reanalysis, high-resolution modelling, and AI/machine learning.

As Senior Research Associate, you will lead key analyses within Work Package 1:Causal Pathways. You will identify extreme and compound temperature and precipitation events across multiple spatial and temporal scales; investigate the interactions between large-scale climate drivers, circulation regimes and atmospheric features that create pathways to extremes; and develop statistical and AI/ML approaches to identify semi-predictable pathways. The work will begin in Europe, using established weather-regime classifications and comprehensive observations, and will then expand globally. You will work closely with colleagues at ETH Zurich, the UK Met Office, ECMWF and the wider EXTREME-FUTURES team, contributing to WP1’s key outcome: a seamless framework for impactful hydroclimatic events from weather to climate scales.

Key Accountabilities

• Assess global temperature and precipitation anomalies across multiple temporal and spatial scales, relative to climatology, to identify extreme and compound hydroclimatic events.
• Work with the wider project team to investigate causal pathways to European extreme events and subsequently extend the analysis globally, linking climate drivers, circulation/weather regimes and tracked atmospheric features.
• Apply and develop robust statistical and causal-inference approaches to identify key driver–feature interactions and quantify relationships associated with persistent, connected and compound extremes.
• Collaborate with project partners to develop and evaluate AI/ML algorithms that capture semi-predictable pathways to extreme events, and benchmark these against physical and machine-learning sub-seasonal to seasonal forecast systems.
• Take a leading role in integrating, documenting and disseminating WP1 outputs, contributing to the project’s seamless weather-to-climate framework and to cross-work-package collaboration.
• Contribute ideas, including enhancements to the technical or methodological aspects of the project.
• Determine appropriate methodologies for research.
• Assess research findings for the need/scope for further investigations.
• Contribute to the writing up of the research and its dissemination, either through seminar and conference presentations or through publications.
• Present research findings, either at conferences or through publications in reputable outlets appropriate to the discipline.
• Contribute to grant applications submitted by others and develop own research objectives and proposals for funding.

The Person

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Knowledge and research experience in climate science, atmospheric science, meteorology, hydroclimatology, or a closely related quantitative discipline, with expertise relevant to weather and climate extremes.
• Experience of analysing large observational, reanalysis, climate-model and/or weather-forecast datasets across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
• Strong quantitative and scientific programming skills, for example in Python, R or an equivalent language, including reproducible data analysis and visualisation workflows.
• Experience of statistical analysis relevant to climate variability and extremes; experience of causal inference, weather regimes/teleconnections, feature tracking, or compound-event analysis is highly desirable.
• Experience of, or demonstrable ability to develop, AI/machine-learning methods for environmental or geophysical data.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with methodological specialists.
• Attention to detail and ability to work at high levels of accuracy
• Ability to present complex information effectively to a range of audiences
• Proven ability to analyse data and write-up results
• Experience of working collaboratively with colleagues
• Excellent IT skills in all major office applications
• The ability to use personal initiative and creativity to solve research problems.
• Awareness of the research environment
• High level of analytical and problem solving capacity
• Ability to communicate complex information with clarity
• Experience of presentations at conferences and/or in high quality publications

Attributes and Behaviour

• Commitment to working positively as a member of a multi-skilled research team
• Ability to negotiate and prioritise multiple, competing responsibilities and to work to deadlines
• Commitment to continued professional development
• Understanding of good practice in equality, inclusion and diversity

Qualifications

• PhD in climate science, atmospheric science, meteorology, hydrology/hydroclimatology, physical geography, environmental science, applied mathematics, data science, or a closely related discipline, or equivalent research experience.