March 2008: Job opportunity within Megha-Tropiques project

A postdoc position is open at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD) at Universite de Paris Jussieu to work on the water vapour retrieval within the Megha-Tropiques project.

The Megha-Tropiques (MT) mission is a joint effort between the French (CNES) and Indian (ISRO) space centers to document the water and energy budget between tropical convection and its environment: it associates three microwave radiometric instruments (Saphir, Madras and ScaRaB) allowing to observe simultaneously water vapour, condensed water (clouds and precipitations), and radiative fluxes. The MT mission will be launched in May 2009.

The PostDoctoral fellow will work on the retrieval of the atmospheric profile of water vapour and on cloud mask/classification using the microwave observations from Saphir and Madras instruments. The main tasks include (1) the improvement of the retrieval algorithms, (2) the responsability of the operational retrieval chain that will be implemented in the Icare data processing center, and (3) the validation of the results using other instruments and radiosonde measurements.

The PostDoc fellow will work at LMD/Paris, in cooperation with the other MT-team within LMD or in the other IPSL labs. Duration of the position is initially for one year.

Applicants should hold a Ph.D in remote sensing and possess:

– Radiative transfer expertise, in particular in the microwave frequencies;

– Experience on the processing of satellite observations;

– Knowledge of C, C++ or Fortran (and Matlab for the analysis of data).

Institute description:

The present position is opened in the Laboratoire de Meteorologie dynamique, LMD (www.lmd.jussieu.fr) member of IPSL at the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. LMD is a CNRS/University laboratory comprising 150 researchers engineers and technicians. The main topic of its research is the modelling of climate and the characterization of various parameters related to the climate using satellite observations as well as modelling.

The Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (www.ipsl.jussieu.fr) was founded at the beginning of the 1990s in order to share the skills of several research laboratories involved in atmospheric, oceanic and planetary sciences in the Paris area. It includes 5 laboratories and 750 people (280 researchers, 240 engineers, technicians and administrative staff, and 230 thesis students and post-docs).

Salary is in the standard CNRS range: about 2100 euros / month net.

Applications, including a CV, a short letter of motivation and two recommendation letters, should be sent to: Filipe Aires, 01 44 27 23 14, filipe.aires@lmd.jussieu.fr.