Opening of a limited-time position at Météo-France for beginner researcher at GAME/CNRM/CEN, located at Grenoble (F-38) : “Climatological Study of natural avalanche activity of the past 50 years in the French Alps”.
Administrative description of the position:
Opening of a limited-time position at Météo-France for beginner researcher, located at the Snow Study Centre (CEN) in Grenoble (F-38). CEN is a laboratory of the « Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques » (CNRM: http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/ ) which is also an associated research unit (GAME) of « CNRS ».
This job is proposed in the framework of a study agreement between Météo-France and MEEDDAT: program 181, action 1 "environmental protection and risk prevention / risk prevention and fight against pollution" of the Ecology, development and sustainable development mission. The fixed-term contract is 24 months, beginning as soon as possible. The pay, according qualification, begins at 2 200,00 Euros net per calendar month before income tax.
The principal working place is near Grenoble inside CEN building. But, as this study will be conducted in collaboration with the CEMAGREF, the candidate will also be required to work at CEMAGREF / ETNA research unit (http://www.cemagref.fr/le-cemagref/lorganisation/les-centres/grenoble/ur-etgr/ ), which will be a second working place, especially during the second year. The buildings of CEN and Cemagref are very close to each other (about 50m) and on the Campus.
The candidate will work inside the AVAL/CEN team under the responsibility of Mr Gérald Giraud and also in relation with Dr Nicolas Eckert of CEMAGREF.
Furthermore, he will present his works to a monitoring committee composed of researchers from CEMAGREF and CEN, MEEDDAT employees and known experts. The working conditions are those used in the CEN. Some field experiments in mountainous areas could be done according to the administrative conditions of the establishment. The position is available with completion of a Ph.D. and is on offer with no restriction on age, sex or nationality in accordance with French law.
Scientifical description of the offer:
Aims of this study joint between the CNRM / CEN and CEMAGREF:
- On the one hand, to establish a climatology of significant natural avalanche events of the past 50 years in the French Alps from nivo-meteorological data, and to search changes or possible trends in their frequency and / or spatial distribution.
- Secondly, to investigate the correlation between indicators of the winter avalanche activity (intensity and frequency of events) and average snow-meteorological parameters(temperature, precipitation, snow cover).
The main source of uncertainty for an avalanche study is due to the lacks and biases related to the difficulties of human observation of avalanches. This limits the detection of climate trends and is an obstacle to the understanding of a link between climatic factors and avalanche activity. This study will therefore be based on simulations of the state of the snow cover made by the chain SAFRAN-CROCUS-MEPRA (SCM), which will better describe the avalanche periods and provide continuous series of instability indicators of the snowpack. These results will be compared with observed avalanches from the “Enquête Permanente sur les Avalanches” (EPA), a database on the activity of some avalanche corridors managed by CEMAGREF and the snow-meteorological network managed by Météo-France (operational since 1970).
The study will involve 4 steps:
- a preliminary analysis on the relevance of the available data sets;
- comparative analyses to class and describe the avalanche periods by reference to snow cover and weather conditions, according to different time and space scales. These analyses should provide information on snow and weather conditions in relation with different types of avalanches;
- the third step will focus on yearly comparisons between some EPA avalanche activity parameters and climatic indicators provided by the CEN;
- in the last step, we will try to define the snow and weather conditions that favour high magnitude avalanches, their velocity and/or their extreme runouts. Possible temporal trends will be searched.
For this work, the accepted candidate will use previous studies and tools and methods developed by CEMAGREF and CEN. He will also develop new ones as needed.
The accepted candidate will carry out an extensive analysis, review and interpretation of the available data. The comparison between different sources of information will make him implement different data processing techniques and statistical tools. He will also be responsible for the development of synthetic tools and indicators for classifying avalanche situations, and to establish a climatology relevant to these situations at different spatial and temporal scales. Finally, he will pay particular attention to the detection of possible trends. This will involve choosing the relevant parameters to characterize and analyse the credibility of the changes.
The work of the candidate will be too assessed by its ability to take an active part in the “deliverables” of the scientific project: publications, interim and final reports, papers in seminars and conferences.
Required qualifications:
- Doctorat en sciences de l’atmosphère, en sciences de la terre, en géographie physique, en géophysique, en statistique appliquée à la géophysique ou en climatologie. / PhD in atmospheric sciences, in physical geography, in earth sciences, in geophysics, in statistic applied to geophysic or in climatology.
- Doctorat obtenu, et depuis moins de 4 ans / PhD defended, and for less than 4 years.
- Expériences en traitements de données et statistique. / Experiences in data processing and statistics
- Capacités pour des analyses spatio-temporelles et l’interprétation de données de type climatologique . / Abilities for time-space and climatological data analyses and interpretation.
- Anglais et Français : oral/écrit English/French : oral/written
- Bonnes notions de programmation (Fortran, Scilab notamment) ; pratique de l’environnement Windows et éventuellement d’UNIX. / Good programming language notions (mainly Fortran, Scilab); Windows and possibly UNIX
- Capacité de communication et d’adaptation, et de travail en équipe. / Ability for communication and for team work.
Hoped qualifications:
- Knowledge of the mountain terrain and snow.
- Knowledge of GIS softwares
Application deadline: 13 Novembre 2009
Application form
The applicants must provide a brief summary (CV) of their past work and a covering letter about their motivations for this study.
to Gérald Giraud (
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and (
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Météo France - GAME/CNRM/CEN
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38400 St-Martin d’Hères
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