Senior Research Associate in Hydroclimatic Extremes and Causal Pathways

Salary: 48,337 to 51,258 per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 27 October 2026

The Role The EXTREME-FUTURES project will develop a seamless framework for predicting hydroclimatic extremes by connecting global climate drivers, regional weather regimes and extreme events across weather-to-climate timescales. The project focuses on persistent and connected extremes, including heatwaves, floods, storms and compound events, and will combine causal inference, feature tracking, observations and reanalysis, high-resolution modelling, and AI/machine learning.

As Senior Research Associate, you will lead key analyses within Work Package 1:

Causal Pathways. You will identify extreme and compound temperature and precipitation events across multiple spatial and temporal scales; investigate the interactions between large-scale climate drivers, circulation regimes and atmospheric features that create pathways to extremes; and develop statistical and AI/ML approaches to identify semi-predictable pathways. The work will begin in Europe, using established weather-regime classifications and comprehensive observations, and will then expand globally.

You will work closely with colleagues at ETH Zurich, the UK Met Office, ECMWF and the wider EXTREME-FUTURES team, contributing to WP1’s key outcome: a seamless framework for impactful hydroclimatic events from weather to climate scales.

As part of our commitment to career development for research colleagues, the University has developed 3 levels of Research Innovation Role Profiles. These profiles set out firstly the generic competencies and responsibilities expected of role holders at each level and, secondly, the general qualifications and experiences needed for entry at a particular level.

Newcastle University is committed to the responsible use of research metrics as part of our research culture and research strategy. We advocate for the transparent, appropriate, and inclusive use of metrics, guided by expert judgment, to support high-quality, impactful research that is open, collaborative and sustainable.

Contact for the post:
Professor Hayley Fowler Duration of post: 24 months

To apply , please upload your CV along with covering letter that evidences how your skills and experience aligns to the person specification as outlined within the job description.

Key Accountabilities Assess global temperature and precipitation anomalies across multiple temporal and spatial scales, relative to climatology, to identify extreme and compound hydroclimatic events.

Work with the wider project team to investigate causal pathways to European extreme events and subsequently extend the analysis globally, linking climate drivers, circulation/weather regimes and tracked atmospheric features.

Apply and develop robust statistical and causal-inference approaches to identify key driver–feature interactions and quantify relationships associated with persistent, connected and compound extremes.

Collaborate with project partners to develop and evaluate AI/ML algorithms that capture semi-predictable pathways to extreme events, and benchmark these against physical and machine-learning sub-seasonal to seasonal forecast systems.

Take a leading role in integrating, documenting and disseminating WP1 outputs, contributing to the project’s seamless weather-to-climate framework and to cross-work-package collaboration.

Contribute ideas, including enhancements to the technical or methodological aspects of the project.

Determine appropriate methodologies for research.

Assess research findings…