PhD fellowship in Quaternary paleoclimate

Updated: over 2 years ago
Job Type: FullTime
Deadline: 06 Aug 2021

PhD position

There is a vacancy for a PhD fellowship in Quaternary geology at the Department of Earth Science (GEO)  at the University of Bergen (UiB). The position is for a fixed-term period of 3 years with the possibility of a 4th year with compulsory other work (e.g. teaching duties at the Department). The position is funded by the Starting Grant program of the Trond Mohn Foundation as part of the PASTFACT  project.


PhD position

There is a vacancy for a PhD fellowship in Quaternary geology at the Department of Earth Science (GEO)  at the University of Bergen (UiB). The position is for a fixed-term period of 3 years with the possibility of a 4th year with compulsory other work (e.g. teaching duties at the Department). The position is funded by the Starting Grant program of the Trond Mohn Foundation as part of the PASTFACT  project.


About the project

PASTFACT investigates the highly uncertain and counteracting impacts of on-going warming and wetting on glaciers and ice caps in the Arctic. Using lake sediment archives from strategically located field sites in Svalbard and possibly Greenland, the project aims to reconstruct paleoclimate conditions from the Early Holocene – a time interval when the Arctic was likely warmer than today. To do so, PASTFACT will use a set of emerging sedimentological and geochemical methods including hydrogen isotopes in sedimentary leaf waxes to assess the seasonality and temperature sensitivity of hydrological intensification under warmer-than-present conditions to determine whether increases in snowfall may counter-balance melt-driven ice melt.

Work tasks

The advertised PhD will investigate the spatio-temporal response of Arctic glaciers to warmer wetter Early Holocene conditions: can changes in snowfall help offset melt or even trigger glacier advances? To do so, the candidate will fingerprint the sedimentological characteristics of glacial sediments in glacier-fed lakes using X-Ray Fluorescence and CT scanning in the EARTHLAB  facility at the Department of Earth Science and complement these data with new remote sensing products to constrain ice dimensions in time and space. Other possible directions for the project (depending on the candidate’s interests and skills) include mass balance modeling or cryptotephra analyses. The successful candidate will carry out research in together with local partners and collaborators from leading (inter)national institutes like the University of Cambridge, Columbia University, GFZ, the University of Copenhagen and the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). Also, at host GEO, you will be affiliated with the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, and the national CHESS  research school on changing climates.



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