Postdoctoral Appointee - Coastal-urban Flooding Postdoctoral Appointee - Coastal-urban Flooding

Postdoctoral Appointee - Coastal-urban Flooding

Argonne National Laboratory

In-person
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4 days ago

Argonne National seeks a postdoctoral researcher to help build a high-resolution coastal-urban flooding modeling capability within the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). This position focuses on

• The investigation of coupled land-river-ocean processes in coastal flooding applications by developing a coupled E3SM configuration that incorporates a subgrid-scale version of the MPAS-Ocean model coupled with E3SM’s land and river components
• Including wave setup processes into E3SM by coupling the E3SM wave and ocean components
• Application of this coupled model to better understand extreme regional compound flooding within a global Earth system model. The aim is to enable realistic coastal flooding simulations within seasonal-to-decadal simulations and to advance DOE’s capability to assess evolving risks in coastal-urban regions.

Other key responsibilities include:

• Mesh design and high-resolution data utilization.
• Develop and refine high-resolution barotropic ocean meshes along U.S. coastlines, including incorporation of levees, jetties, and wetlands.
• Ingest and process coastal datasets (bathymetry, topography, land use/cover) to support accurate wetting and drying and bottom friction/vegetation drag parameterizations.
• E3SM integration and coupling. Integrate two-way land–river–ocean couplings with a subgrid scale ocean model to support upstream river boundary conditions and coastal inundation processes.
• Incorporate wave setup effects by coupling WAVEWATCH III radiation stresses to E3SM configurations for coastal extreme water levels.
• Validation and application.
• Design and run event-scale and historical simulations to validate coastal water levels, tides, and storm surge against observations for representative extreme and sequential events.
• Analyze model performance and sensitivity (e.g., drag schemes, mesh resolution, feature representation); document improvements and limitations. Collaboration, mentoring, and dissemination.
• Collaborate with DOE E3SM, ICoM, and InteRFACE, projects as well as university partners on coastal methods and validation strategies.
• Mentor summer students on data analysis and visualization workflows.
• Publish in peer-reviewed journals, present at scientific conferences, and contribute to open-source code repositories and documentation.

Position Requirements

Required skills, knowledge and qualifications:

• PhD in physical oceanography, coastal engineering, computational science, Earth system science, applied mathematics, or a related field.
• Experience with one or more coastal/ocean modeling systems (e.g., MPAS-Ocean, ADCIRC, ROMS, NEMO, WAVEWATCH III) and familiarity with barotropic/baroclinic ocean processes, tides, storm surge, and coastal inundation.
• Proficiency in scientific programming (Fortran/C/C++), Python-based analysis, version control (Git), and working in Linux/HPC environments (MPI, batch schedulers).
• Hands-on experience with geospatial data processing (NetCDF/HDF5, GDAL, xarray) and coastal datasets (e.g., GEBCO/ETOPO, USGS/NOAA/NCEI), including mesh generation and quality control.
• Strong communication skills and a record of peer-reviewed publications.
• Ability to model Argonne's core values of impact, respect, safety, integrity and teamwork.

Preferred qualifications:

• Direct experience with MPAS-Ocean and/or E3SM, variable- or unstructured-resolution mesh tools (e.g., JIGSAW, MOAB), and wetting–drying schemes for coastal inundation.
• Experience in model coupling frameworks (e.g., CIME/ESMF/NUOPC), wave–surge interactions, and coastal nutrient/salinity flux transport.
• Familiarity with leadership-class computing environments (ALCF/NERSC/OLCF).
• Evidence of collaborative, team-based research and mentoring of students.

Job Family

Postdoctoral

Job Profile

Postdoctoral Appointee

Worker Type

Long-Term (Fixed Term)

Time Type

Full time

The expected hiring range for this position is $70,758.00-$.

Please note that the pay range information is a general guideline only. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as, but not limited to, the scope…