PhD Projects

PhD Projects

Joint PhD: Examining beyond-2100 Earth System feedbacks across the model hierarchy

Understanding and quantifying centennial-scale Earth System feedbacks for a wide range of scenarios is key to provide updated information on remaining carbon budgets for policy makers and society alike. This PhD will examine long-term Earth System feedbacks in both a comprehensive JSBACH land surface  component of MPI Earth System Model, and a reduced-complexity carbon cycle model MAGICC. The PhD will in particular focus on using JSBACH in various sensitivity experiments to quantify interactions of carbon cycle with permafrost, nitrogen cycle, and fire components. The PhD project will then develop and calibrate parameterisations in MAGICC to replicate the JSBACH characteristic responses in terms of its carbon and nitrogen pool sizes and timescales, permafrost and fire carbon  emissions etc. 

If successful, the PhD candidate will be enrolled at both the University of Melbourne and Universität Hamburg, and will work in close cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. The candidate will be co-supervised by supervisors at both institutions and will spend at least twelve months at the University of Melbourne and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. 

The application process is competitive, with higher than the equivalent of a University of Melbourne 80% in a relevant degree expected. Information on the University of Melbourne entry requirements can be seen here, and Universität Hamburg requirements can be viewed here. 

The successful applicant will be enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. They will be part of the Australian-German Climate and Energy College, the University of Melbourne, and the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), Universität Hamburg. The candidate's scholarship will include a 100% fee remission scholarship, a living allowance for three years with a possible 6-month extension, and funding for travel.

Application Deadline: Monday 21 October. 

Joint PhD: Potential adjustments to the raw CMIP6 multi-model ensembles

Future climate change is researched along various high and low emission scenarios that encapsulate different driving forces, such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and natural forcings. The primary technique are to use complex Earth System Models for these projections and provide policy makers and stakeholder with the multi-model ensembles (MMEs) and their means. There are several issues of why those MMEs are suboptimal, but it is less clear of how to address any shortcomings. For example, not all climate models run all scenarios, which makes the comparison difficult, so an adjustment for this “ensemble of opportunity” might need to be pursued. Another issue is that the MMEs of Earth System Models might be shifted in terms of key climate indicators (like climate sensitivity) compared to independently assessed ranges thereof. Other - more researched - examples are the model-interdependencies and how to account for those (which is still an open question). So far, little research has been conducted on how to potentially adjust the MMEs for altering forcing trajectories, for example, if SOX aerosol emissions are dropping much faster than anticipated across the scenario spectrum. Building on the insights from the Reduced-complexity Model intercomparison project (RCMIP.org), this PhD will investigate how to adjust MMEs from Earth System Models for changing forcings, whether that relates to new research insights on forcing amplitudes, an unforeseen volcanic event or similar. Methodologically, this PhD topic will - inter alia - make use of emulators, calibrated to individual CMIP6 models, in order to project those changes in projections due to varying forcing assumptions. A second approach is the statistical super-position of ESM spatio-temporal response patterns, e.g. adding a scaled single forcing ESM response to aerosols over an all-forcing run to mimic the response under an alternative aerosol emission scenario. The PhD candidate will pursue various research questions and methodological approaches in this realm of how to address shortcomings of MMEs. 

If successful, the PhD candidate will be enrolled at both the University of Melbourne and Universität Hamburg. The candidate will be co-supervised by supervisors at both institutions, will be based at the University of Melbourne and will spend at least twelve months at Universität Hamburg. 

The application process is competitive, with higher than the equivalent of a University of Melbourne 80% in a relevant degree expected. Information on the University of Melbourne entry requirements can be seen here, and Universität Hamburgrequirements can be viewed here. 

The successful applicant will be enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. They will be part of the Australian-German Climate and Energy College, the University of Melbourne, and a member in the ‘School of Integrated Climate and Earth System Sciences (SICCS)’, the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), Universität Hamburg. 

SICSS is a graduate school originating from the Cluster of Excellence on Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CliSAP, 2007-2018). SICSS is now part of the newly installed Cluster of Excellence CLICCS (2019-2025). SICSS offers education, guidance and supervision from leading experts in integrated climate science. Universität Hamburg and its partners provide a wide-ranging research infrastructure in climate science and an international campus atmosphere with students and lecturers from all over the world. 

The candidate's scholarship will include a 100% fee remission scholarship, a living allowance for three years with a possible 6-month extension, and funding for travel.

Application Deadline: Monday 21 October. 

Joint PhD: Mapping large scale ESM response characteristics and their inherent “reproducibility” with emulators - or limitations

This PhD project will examine the strengths and weaknesses of so-called emulators of climate models. Such emulators are being developed to obtain additional information on the future evolution of the climate system that go beyond the direct output of complex, large-scale Earth System Models (ESMs). Through the use of emulators, the ESM results can for example be bias corrected, can be examined for underlying dominating processes and can be interpolated to future forcing scenarios that were not simulated by the ESM itself.

Despite the growing use of emulators in climate research, their robustness is currently not clear. In this project, we aim for a systematic analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of ESM emulators to guide their use in future research and policy design, for example.

This project will exploit the existence of very large ensembles from individual ESMs, such as the CESM large ensemble or the MPI Grand Ensemble. In these ensembles, the same climate model was run tens of times for identical external forcing conditions. The individual simulations thus only differ because of the, often substantial, impact of chaotic internal climate variability. We will use information based on a subset of these simulations, and examine how well an emulator can simulate the full range of simulation trajectories given by the full ensemble. Additionally, we will examine in as how much an emulator based on a single given scenario of future emission pathways can emulate simulations based on other scenarios. A third topic we will cover will be the possibility to use emulator results to assist in the tuning of complex ESMs.

We expect the results of this project to provide insights that allow both a better understanding of the climate system of the Earth, and a more robust design of future modelling activities with ESMs.

If successful, the PhD candidate will be enrolled at both the University of Melbourne and Universität Hamburg. The candidate will be co-supervised by supervisors at both institutions, will be based at the University of Melbourne and will spend at least twelve months at Universität Hamburg. 

The application process is competitive, with higher than the equivalent of a University of Melbourne 80% in a relevant degree expected. Information on the University of Melbourne entry requirements can be seen here, and Universität Hamburg requirements can be viewed here. 

The successful applicant will be enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. They will be part of the Australian-German Climate and Energy College, the University of Melbourne, and a member in the ‘School of Integrated Climate and Earth System Sciences (SICCS)’, the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), Universität Hamburg. SICSS is a graduate school originating from the Cluster of Excellence on Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CliSAP, 2007-2018). SICSS is now part of the newly installed Cluster of Excellence CLICCS (2019-2025). SICSS offers education, guidance and supervision from leading experts in integrated climate science. Universität Hamburg and its partners provide a wide-ranging research infrastructure in climate science and an international campus atmosphere with students and lecturers from all over the world. 

The candidate's scholarship will include a 100% fee remission scholarship, a living allowance for three years with a possible 6-month extension, and funding for travel.

Application Deadline: Monday 21 October. 

Joint PhD: Developing non-linear and interactive sea ice emulators

Arctic sea ice is a key climate indicator.  Sea ice integrates over many years changes in the atmospheric and oceanic fluxes and clearly reflects changes by its varying extent and thickness. Complex climate models have long had difficulties in reproducing these changes realistically, which has been linked to shortcomings in their atmospheric and oceanic forcing of the ice cover. Much of the behaviour of sea ice can directly be linked to (non-)linear relationships involving the external forcing of the ice cover, expressed for example in global mean temperature. This PhD will build a sea-ice emulator that can be used as part of reduced complexity models (or be a module in MAGICC). This will allow impact researchers and policy-makers to have additional key climate variables at hand when performing integrated assessments of mitigation and adaptation options. 

If successful, the PhD candidate will be enrolled at both the University of Melbourne and Universität Hamburg. The candidate will be co-supervised by supervisors at both institutions, will be based at the University of Melbourne and will spend at least twelve months at Universität Hamburg. 

The successful candidate will become a member of the Australian-German Climate and Energy College, Melbourne, 

The application process is competitive, with higher than the equivalent of a University of Melbourne 80% in a relevant degree expected. Information on the University of Melbourne entry requirements can be seen here, and Universität Hamburg requirements can be viewed here. 

The successful applicant will be enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. They will be part of the Australian-German Climate and Energy College, the University of Melbourne, and a member in the ‘School of Integrated Climate and Earth System Sciences (SICCS)’, the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), Universität Hamburg. 

SICSS is a graduate school originating from the Cluster of Excellence on Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CliSAP, 2007-2018). SICSS is now part of the newly installed Cluster of Excellence CLICCS (2019-2025). SICSS offers education, guidance and supervision from leading experts in integrated climate science. Universität Hamburg and its partners provide a wide-ranging research infrastructure in climate science and an international campus atmosphere with students and lecturers from all over the world. 

The candidate's scholarship will include a 100% fee remission scholarship, a living allowance for three years with a possible 6-month extension, and funding for travel.

Application Deadline: Monday 21 October. 

Joint PhD: The role of wave-cloud coupling in shaping patterns of clouds

This project analyzes satellite images and other observational data to study two-way interactions between convection and tropospheric waves. In particular it investigates how these interactions influence patterns of convection and clouds. Numerical experiments in the form of high-resolution simulations are designed to support the results.

If successful, the PhD candidate will be enrolled at both the University of Melbourne and Universität Hamburg, and will work in close cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. The candidate will be co-supervised by supervisors at both institutions and will spend at least twelve months at the University of Melbourne and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. 

Applicants must have a strong quantitative background in meteorology, mathematics, physics, or a related field. The application process is competitive, with higher than the equivalent of a University of Melbourne 80% in a relevant degree expected. Information on the University of Melbourne entry requirements can be seen here, and Universität Hamburg requirements can be viewed here. 

The successful applicant will be enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne within the School of Earth Sciences. They will also be part of the University of Melbourne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, the International Max Planck Research School of Earth System Modelling (IMPRS-ESM) and the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), Universität Hamburg.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes is a major 7-year initiative supported by the Australian Research Council. It is a consortium of five Australian universities with a suite of outstanding national and international Partner Organisations as collaborators. The Centre of Excellence research agenda encompasses interconnected research programs focusing on key climate processes responsible for Heatwaves, Rainfall, Drought, and Climate Variability.

The candidate's scholarship will include a 100% fee remission scholarship, a living allowance for three years with a possible 6-month extension, and funding for travel.
 
Application Deadline: Monday 21 October. 

Web tools and Projects we developed

  • Open-NEM

    The live tracker of the Australian electricity market.

  • Paris Equity Check

    This website is based on a Nature Climate Change study that compares Nationally Determined Contributions with equitable national emissions trajectories in line with the five categories of equity outlined by the IPCC.

  • liveMAGICC Climate Model

    Run one of the most popular reduced-complexity climate carbon cycle models online. Used by IPCC, UNEP GAP reports and numerous scientific publications.

  • NDC & INDC Factsheets

    Check out our analysis of all the post-2020 targets that countries announced under the Paris Agreement.