Job: 2 Post Doc places at TROPOS

TROPOS is currently looking for two Post Docs who are interested in investigating the impact of controlled seeding experiments on the evolution of mixed-phase clouds. Expertise is required either in the field of radar-lidar remote sensing techniques or in cloud-resolved modelling.

• PostDoc-1 will work on the characterization of the transition of the seeded supercooled liquid stratiform clouds into mixed-phase clouds using synergistic, multi-wavelength and polarimetric ground-based remote sensing with scanning radar and lidar. Several techniques for retrieving aerosol and hydrometeor habits and number concentrations were developed at TROPOS in the last years and shall be deployed in the activities. The planned CLOUDLAB in-situ observations provide ideal evaluation scenarios.
• PostDoc-2 will accompany the observations with cloud-resolving model simulations with the aerosol-sensitive spectral-bin model COSMO-SPECS or similar spectral-bin models. Radar forward operators (PAMTRA or CRSim) will be used to obtain a closure between the simulations and in-situ and remote-sensing observations of the cloud systems.

TROPOS is an internationally renowned institute in the field of aerosol and cloud research with a strong emphasis on the characterization of aerosol-cloud-precipitation interaction, which is considered one of the least-understood components of the hydrological cycle. An extraordinary challenge is understanding the role of aerosol in the transition from supercooled liquid cloud droplets into ice crystals, as it involves a complex mix of dynamical and cloud microphysical processes such as primary and secondary ice formation, ice multiplication, riming, and aggregation. Relationships between these processes are not well understood and considerable uncertainties in weather forecasts are attributed to this lack of understanding.

PolarCAP will tackle the challenge of liquid-to-ice transition in clouds by applying state-of-the-art ground-based remote sensing techniques and accompanying cloud-resolved spectral-bin modeling to aerosol-controlled cloud environments. The project will be realized in close collaboration with the renowned ERC project CLOUDLAB of ETH Zurich. Both projects will jointly conduct remote-sensing and in-situ observations of the impact of controlled cloud seeding experiments on the microphysical evolution of stratiform cloud systems, with the goal to improve the ice formation processes in model simulations.

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