The postdoctoral researcher will be a specialist in Greek texts and intellectual culture, and may also have skills in Arabic/Syriac/Aramaic. They will examine textual evidence for intellectual and social responses to environmental change, and contemporary awareness of human effects on landscapes, contextualising this with reference to relevant archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence, supported by Prof. Dan Lawrence (Durham University, UK) and Prof. Dominik Fleitmann (Universität Basel, Switzerland). The researcher will first define a corpus of textual evidence for analysis: this may include letters (e.g. Gregory of Nazianzus), historical texts (e.g. Prokopios, John Malalas, Chronicle of Monemvasia), hagiographies (e.g. Lives of the Desert Fathers), ‘scientific’ or medical works (e.g. Galen, John Philoponus, Geoponika), documentary records (e.g. administrative/transactional records such as many of the Oxyrhynchus papyri), theological or homiletic texts (e.g. Basil of Caesarea, Athanasios of Sinai). The researcher will also undertake searches for key words in relevant databases (eg. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) to identify additional relevant written evidence. Once a specific corpus of textual evidence has been identified, in the second stage the researcher will read scholarship relating to climatic/environmental variation within the geographical areas and chronological periods from which the textual evidence originates (as far as it is possible to identify these). The third stage will be to analyse the textual evidence intertextually (by comparing texts and key passages from texts with each other, and by examining them within and in relation to their intellectual, historical, literary and theological contexts) and to contextualise this evidence with reference to data relating to climatic or environmental conditions. An important aspect here will be comparison between different geographical areas and over time, selected on the basis of coverage and where possible to coordinate with available palaeoenvironmental evidence, to identify similarity and variety in responses. The researcher will also consider the sources of the texts, to ascertain whether (for example), ‘scientific’ texts simply repeat earlier information or whether authors offer new or different ideas in relation to observed phenomena or their contemporary situations.

A main challenge for the natural sciences today is to predict the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems, which offer vital services to society, because our understanding of how species might respond to climate change is insufficient. Within this project, the successful candidate will explore the use of hybridization capture of ancient DNA preserved in marine sediments. By developing a hybridization capture assay with focus on marine, arctic key species, the postdoc will investigate past temporal and spatial trajectories in biotic responses to climate variability off west Greenland over the Holocene-Anthropocene (the past ~11,700 years).

The successful candidate will be expected to focus on down-core sea surface temperature reconstructions from foraminiferal Mg/Ca and alkenone paleothermometry.

Past warm intervals (interglacials) of the Quaternary represent a series of natural experiments to understand the sensitivity of the climate system to its boundary conditions i.e. the external orbital forcing, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and continental ice sheet volume. In particular, the interglacials of the last 450 thousands of years (ka hereafter) are relevant in the context of current and future global climate change as they are characterized by a warming amplitude in Antarctica, comparable to that simulated for the end of the century.

The boundary conditions varied a lot from one interglacial to another with consequent effects on the recorded climate changes in natural archives. Indeed, paleoclimate records reveal a large interglacial diversity in terms of their intensity, shape and duration. The occurrence of interglacials with differing characteristics is an intriguing aspect of glacial-interglacial cycles that the ‘ice age’ theory does not account for. Despite significant progress made over recent decades in developing continuous records from climate archives and climate models with different degrees of complexity to test possible mechanisms, the link between interglacial properties, orbital forcing, atmospheric CO2 and resultant feedbacks remains unexplained.

Two of the main limitations are that:
-A comprehensive view of the forcings, the climate system response and the impacts at larger scales requires to build paleodata data syntheses providing a spatio-temporal view of interglacial climate at multi-millennial scale. However, such data syntheses are still lacking beyond the Last Interglacial referred also to as Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e, ~129-115 ka).
-The modelling of interglacials and the comparison with paleodata are key (1) to test with physics-based tools climate forcing and feedbacks hypothesized from the data and (2) to evaluate how well Earth System Models also used for future projections, simulate warm climates. However, the realism of Earth System model simulations investigating the diversity of interglacials has not been fully tested yet as model-data comparisons focus mainly on the two most recent interglacials.

As part of the HOTCLIM project, work is on-going to provide the first multi-millennial-scale spatio-temporal climate data syntheses over Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 7 (~260-190 ka) and MIS 9 (~350-300 ka). Those two intervals are of particular interest: the MIS 7 warmth intensity is relatively weak while the northern hemisphere summer insolation forcing is one of the strongest in the past 800 ka. As for MIS 9, it is characterized by the highest atmospheric CO2 levels over the last 800 ka.
Hence, we are looking for a postdoctoral researcher who will investigate past interglacial diversity using MIS 7 and MIS 9 as study cases to be compared also with MIS 5e. To do so, she/he will:
* Build on the individual MIS 9, MIS 7 and MIS 5e climate syntheses to compare climate changes at regional scale between these three different interglacial periods as recorded in natural archives;
* Compile existing transient and equilibrium climate simulations from different Earth System models on MIS 7 and MIS 9 and identify key modeled climatic patterns during these two interglacials;
* Lead a comparison between (1) MIS 9, 7 and 5e climate data and (2) outputs from existing and new simulations.
The selected candidate is expected to write scientific articles, to present results in international conferences and to be involved in the ICE3 team and IGE activities (group meetings, seminars, ...).

The PhD candidate will work within two of the main research sections of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development external link: Innovation Studies and Environmental Sciences at the core of Copernicus themes’ Integrated Modelling, Transitions, Sustainable Land and Sustainable Food.

The essential duties of the position are 1) preparation of marine sediment samples for foraminiferal-based geochemical analyses, 2) speciation of foraminiferal samples, 3) conducting radiocarbon measurements with the mini carbon dating system (MICADAS). Other proxies and/or duties may be added during the project and the Post-doctoral Research Associate will be expected to actively participate in data processing and interpretation. The project will ultimately improve our understanding of the relative phasing between abrupt climate shifts and changes in NADW and AMOC strength during the last deglaciation.

A paleoclimatologist with expertise in reconstructing past climate variability that will provide valuable insights into the mechanisms driving past changes over the Holocene. They will collect, compile, and analyze paleoclimate data from a range of sources, to reconstruct past climate variability, apply statistical models to evaluate the sensitivity of the hydrological cycle to past climate variability, and collaborate with other members of the research team to integrate paleoclimate data with hydrological models.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of the project, the candidates should have experience in collaborating across different fields and excellent communication skills to facilitate effective teamwork and the dissemination of the research results. Previous mentoring and teaching experience is considered important, since the position involves working closely with Ph.D. candidates and supervising courses such as Exploratory Data Analysis, Applied Environmental Statistics or Earth System Sciences.

We invite energetic and creative applicants with a strong research background in ice-sheet modelling. As successful applicant, you will work in an interdisciplinary team of Earth System modellers in the Geosystem Modelling group at MARUM (www.marum.de). Within this team, you will contribute to the
continuous improvement of the coupled Earth System model (CESM-PISM) with a special focus on the ice-sheet component (PISM) and its coupling to the atmosphere and ocean. You will further carry out model simulations of the last glacial and deglaciation in a supercomputing environment. In particular, you will explore the role of ice-sheet dynamics in millennial-scale climate variability (e.g. Heinrich events) and publish your scientific results in international journals.

This is a 1.5 year full time post (18 months) to start in Spring 2023. The post holder will work on the following main tasks under the supervision of the technician staff in the department: (i) sampling sediment cores (ii) Sample preparation for tephra analysis (iii) Shard identification and Picking.

Main duties and responsibilities
1. Undertake research under the supervision of a Principal Investigator (PI) in accordance with the “Why does it Rain in the Desert” NERC funded project as an active team member.
2. Contribute to the development of the research project by undertaking the following activities:
• Analyses of the environmental drivers of isotopic changes in speleothems;
• Development and application of a forward model accounting for changes in vegetation composition, and isotopic modification in the soil and epikarst;
• Analysis of climate model outputs to determine plausible scenarios for precipitation changes in northern Africa;
• Performing data-model comparisons, including the use of appropriate statistics and metrics and the use of data assimilation;
3. Liaise with the wider project team to ensure deliverables are disseminated effectively and at the appropriate time to relevant stakeholders;
4. Provide research support in relation to the preparation of figures, public code and other inputs to publications.