Research Associate for the Project “EPOC & UHEAT”

**Institution**Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences, Department of Earth System Sciences, Experimental Oceanography **Salary level**EGR. 13 TV-L **Start date**01.02.2027, fixed for a period of 21 months (This is a fixed-term contract in accordance with Section 2 of the academic fixed-term labor contract act [Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, WissZeitVG]). **Application deadline**04.12.2026 **Scope of work**full-time position suitable for part-time The work begins in EPOC, a Horizon Europe project coordinated at the University of Hamburg, asking where the overturning and its heat transport vary independently with latitude, and what the answer implies for the choice of latitudes in a sustained in situ observing system. It continues in UHEAT (Understanding Ocean Heat Content and Its Role in Driving Marine Heatwaves and Ecosystem Responses), funded under EIG CONCERT-Japan with partners at the University of the Balearic Islands/IMEDEA (Spain) and Hokkaido University (Japan). **Your responsibilities** ------------------------- Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue further academic qualifications outside of their work responsibilities. * establish where the overturning and its heat transport vary independently with latitude, and so where sustained in situ measurement is needed; test candidate choices by subsampling a reanalysis at those locations e.g. with the openly available OceanOSSE code * build the evidence for that from two directions: a multi-observational estimate of ocean circulation, combining altimetric sea level with ocean-mass fields from the project’s Bayesian framework to approximate the circulation as a two-layer, barotropic and baroclinic system; and the coherence of ocean heat content in space and time, separating locally from remotely forced change * assemble and analyze the ocean reanalyses this rests on (e.g. ORAS5, GLORYS12, and relate regional ocean heat content change to heat transport convergence, the AMOC and the gyre circulations * contribute to the regional heat budgets and to the link between ocean heat content change and the occurrence of marine heatwaves, led by partners in Spain * contribute to open-source software used across the community, including amocatlas, the package of AMOC observing-array records maintained in the group * coordinate Work Package 2 across the consortium, publish results, present at project meetings and international conferences, and work with MSc students linked to the project For further information, please contact Prof. Eleanor Frajka-Williams. **Your profile** ---------------- A university degree in a relevant field, plus doctorate. * PhD in physical oceanography, climate science, applied mathematics or a related field * experience analyzing ocean reanalyses or model output, or large observational datasets (Argo, altimetry, GRACE) * familiarity with ocean heat budgets, meridional overturning or gyre dynami