The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses Mare Nostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for Euro HPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.

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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.

We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.

If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.

We are looking for a motivated postdoctoral researcher to join the Atmospheric Composition (AC) group of the Earth Sciences Department of the BSC (BSC-ES). The BSC-ES aims to carry out research into modelling and understanding the behavior of the Earth’s system. The AC group is currently composed of about 50 people among researchers, engineers and students of different nationalities. It aims at better understanding and predicting the spatiotemporal variations of atmospheric pollutants along with their effects upon air quality, weather and climate. This is addressed through the continuous development and application of numerical models over multiple scales, from weather to climate and from global to urban scales.

The successful candidate will join the Air Quality and Chemistry team of AC group to conduct research on brown carbon. The light-absorbing portion of organic aerosols (OA) is referred to as brown carbon (Br C), which has gained increasing attention in recent years due to its potential impact on climate. Despite this interest, Br C is still represented in atmospheric models in a relatively simplistic manner. As understanding of Br C in the atmosphere has improved, the representation of Br C in models has progressed from assuming OA as weakly absorbing aerosol to more dynamical representation of Br C emissions and aging processes. Recently, a Br C parameterization has been introduced in the Multiscale Online Non-hydrostatic Atmosphe Re CHemistry model (MONARCH) developed by the AC group.

In this context, the successful candidate will contribute to the following activities: (i) review current research on Br C, (ii) improve the Br C representation in the MONARCH model, (iii) conduct numerical simulations with the MONARCH model, (iii) evaluate Br C absorption using aethalometer and sun-photometer observational data, and (iv) quantify the fraction of aerosol absorption attributed to organic aerosols in Europe.

The candidate will work in a highly collaborative environment, with tight links with other researchers in the AC group. The researchers will have the opportunity to follow multiple training activities, including those aimed at improving coding and data analysis, scientific and project writing abilities, or project management. All this will be implemented via the formal courses organized by the Education and Training team and Human Resources, and the participation in the regular seminars organized by the department.