Early Career Fellow - Interfacing with Digital Twins

at  ECMWF

The DWD awards fellowships to early career scientists to work on a research project during a guest stay at ECMWF. Fellows will be based at the ECMWF offices in Bonn, Germany for a duration of two years.
The Early Career Fellow will work with scientists from different teams within ECMWF. The work will also include support by and collaboration with the Centre for Earth System Observation and Computational Analysis (University of Bonn, University of Cologne and Forschungszentrum Julich).
In addition to the research activities at ECMWF, an important component of the STEP UP! Fellowship program is a training program offered by DWD to support the Early Career Fellows’ professional and career development during their stay with ECMWF.

EDUCATION

• Successfully completed scientific or technical university degree (Bachelor, Master, Diploma), preferably in physics, mathematics, computer science or machine learning, environmental sciences, hydrology, oceanography and meteorology
• Confident knowledge of written and spoken English (at least level B2 CEFR)

EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

• Experience or expertise in numerical modeling of physical processes
• Knowledge of shell scrips and python and being able to read/understand (Fortran) code
• Background in global or regional simulations is desirable
• Knowledge of written and spoken German (Level A2 CEFR)
• Experience in cooperation with international organizations is an advantage
• Very strong communication and information skills to create a sustainable positive and trusting climate of discussion when dealing with people
• Initiative and ability for constructive and collegial cooperation
• Ability to work independently and on one’s own initiative to solve problems appropriately within one’s own field of activity
• Ability to think and judge in order to weigh up different familiar factors and form an appropriate judgment from them
• Empathy in order to recognize different needs of participants and to be able to take them into account appropriately when dealing with groups
• Planning and organizational skills with the capacity to work on a diverse range of tasks to tight deadlines
• Intercultural competence as a prerequisite for successful cooperation in international teams and organizations

THE ROLE

This position is located in the Evaluation Section of the Forecast and Services Department of ECMWF. The Fellow will work especially with those teams involved in designing Destination Earth workflows with a particular emphasis on connecting technical and scientific knowledge, while answering targeted questions on extreme weather impacts using bespoke simulation capabilities. Simulation will be conducted on Europe’s leading supercomputing facilities involving both IFS and ICON models.
The purpose of this position will be to use the DestinE Extremes Digital Twin and complementary National Digital Twin data in extreme weather situations(e.g. heavy rainfall, medicanes) to translate the global weather information into regional information useful for decision-making. This position will contribute to maximise the use and impact of DestinE by users, linking with existing applications, especially related to weather and climate services.

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Selecting case studies highlighting scale-related aspects
• Designing and running bespoke simulations on EuroHPC platforms using both IFS and ICON
• Building diagnostics aiming at quantifying global-to-regional performance in predicting selected extreme weather events, analysing initial condition sensitivity and systematic errors
• Applying methods designed in DestinE for uncertainty, especially to understand global-to-regional propagation of uncertainty
• Suggesting and testing potential improvements to the systems
• Engaging with DWD teams involved in weather and climate services to explore benefits and added value of DestinE and explore how to embed bespoke simulations in existing operational processes