Ruđer Bošković Institute

The Ruđer Bošković Institute is the largest Croatian scientific research center and the leading institution in the Republic of Croatia in terms of number of papers published in international scientific journals.

Homepage: https://www.irb.hr/

Are you passionate about climate modeling, eager to push the boundaries of regional atmospheric simulations, and excited to contribute to real-world ecological impact?

We invite applications for a postdoctoral researcher to join the cutting-edge ERC-funded IGNITE project lead by Dr. Jelena Bujan (https://erc.europa.eu/event-speaker/jelena-bujan) and focused on understanding how thermal extremes affect ant survival and ecosystem function. The interdisciplinary project integrates behavioral ecology, ecophysiology, and climate modeling to explore the resilience of Croatian island ecosystems under increasing climate stress.

The successful candidate will work on the development and implementation of a novel high-resolution climate modeling framework— IslaClim —which builds upon the Adriatic Sea and Coast (AdriSC) modeling suite (https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/14/3995/2021/). This work will directly contribute to identifying climate stress patterns at fine scales and inform both experimental and applied ecological research.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement simulations at 500 m resolution using the WRF or ICON models.
• Couple the WRF or ICON models with a Land Model (e.g., CLM 5.0) to improve surface temperature and humidity representation.
• Integrate satellite-derived vegetation data into the coupled land-atmosphere model to reflect spatial variation in land cover and its impact on local microclimate.
• Simulate both present-day and future climate scenarios using the pseudo-global warming (PGW) approach.
• Assist in analyzing model outputs to quantify spatial and temporal variability of temperature extremes, particularly heatwave frequency and intensity across Croatian islands.
• Collaborate with ecologists to link climate model outputs to biological experiments and ecosystem modeling.

Requirements

• PhD in atmospheric sciences, climate science, oceanography, or a related discipline.
• Strong experience with WRF, ICON and/or regional climate modeling.
• Familiarity with land surface modeling and coupling strategies.
• Solid programming skills in Python, Fortran, bash, and familiarity with HPC environments.
• Experience working with satellite or remote sensing data (e.g. vegetation indices) is an asset.
• Demonstrated ability to work in interdisciplinary teams and communicate with non-climate experts.
• Fluency in English (spoken and written).

We Offer

• An opportunity to contribute to a high-impact, interdisciplinary ERC project.
• Mentorship from a leading expert in regional climate modeling.
• Collaboration with ecologists and climate scientists.
• Access to high-performance computing facilities and regional datasets.
• Flexible work environment based at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Split (or Zagreb)

How to reach us?

Please send the following documents in a single PDF file to cdenami@irb.hr with subject line: Postdoc Application – ERC IslaClim

• A cover letter explaining your motivation and suitability for the position
• A detailed CV including computational skills and publications