CCMAR​/BPD​/Post - Doctoral Fellowship; M​/F | Global Changes

Post-Doctoral Fellowship

The Centro de Ciências do Mar do Algarve (CCMAR) opens one (01) vacancy for a postdoctoral fellowship (BPD) in the scientific area of Global Changes or related area, eligible to candidates of any nationality, including stateless persons and beneficiaries of the political refugee status, within the scope of the research project Hidroshifts with the reference PTDC/CTA CLI/4297/2021 - "Compreender as variações abrutas do hidroclima nas médias latitudes do Atlântico Norte" funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under the following conditions:

Host and Contracting Institution: CCMAR

Work Plan, Tasks and Objectives:

Global warming is causing rapid melting of glacier caps and contributing to an intensification of extreme weather events in vulnerable regions. The intensification of droughts, strongly increasing the risk of fires in certain regions of the planet and the increase in the severity of storms and floods in others, are worrying societies.

Extreme events occurred in the past mainly during glacial periods and transition periods between glacial and interglacial periods (deglaciations/terminations). These transitions are seen as potential test cases to understand and simulate extreme climate events, since they are marked not only by abrupt increase in CO2 and in Temperature. For this reason, deglaciations are excellent examples of the non-linear behaviour of the climate system, and are therefore considered unique periods to test the projected climate for 2100.

The main objective of Hydroshifts is therefore to understand the causes and mechanisms that control and regulate climate instabilities, namely variations in hydroclimate in regions considered vulnerable and exposed to extreme phenomena (extreme drought, fires, storms and floods), such as the SW Europe and SE USA.

The Hydroshifts project proposes to perform at very high temporal resolution, direct ocean-continent comparison (using analyses of pollen grains and continental and marine biomarkers but also associations of planktonic foraminifera), in two different locations, in SW Europe and on the coast SE United States, in several periods of deglaciation with different ice volume precedent conditions: TI, TV and TVII. These deglaciations (TI: ~ 18 thousand years, TV: ~ 430 thousand years and TVII: ~ 625 thousand years) present some similarities and differences between them and with the scenario that lies ahead.

The work proposed for this post-doc will be to analyse the pollen content of a sedimentary record ODP 1058 for terminations TV and TVII. There are 185 to be analysed, 95 will be analysed by the postdoc fellow and the rest by the project PI.

Objectives:

The work proposed for this postdoc will be to analyse the pollen content of a sedimentary record ODP 1058 for the TV and TVII. There are 185 to be analysed at the level of pollen content, of which 95 will be analysed by the postdoc fellow. These data will be coupled with data obtained by PI, in order to explore not only changes in terrestrial vegetation/climate during the TV and TVII terminations but also during the glacier periods that precede them, i.e,

MIS 12 and MIS 16. In addition to changes in vegetation/ continental climate, it will also be possible to determine the total pollen concentrations (TPC) which in this area will reflect variations in the frequency and intensity of storms in the region. This work is integrated into tasks 3 and 4 of the Hydroshifts project. Subsequently, these data will also be compared with SST data (surface water temperature) obtained either through the analysis of alkanones (fellowship holder: Mélinda Maritins, from IPMA) or through the study of associations of planktonic foraminifera (Researcher hired by CCMAR Andreia Rebotim;

and by the fellow investigation by CCMAR João Santos) (Task
5).

Description of the work plan:

In this first 6 months of fellowship: