Postdoc opportunity for magnetospheric research, Umeå, Sweden

The aim of the project is to accomplish an advanced physical understanding of the temporal behavior of geomagnetic storms, in particular in terms of their short-term variability with respect to solar wind forcing and internal
processes in the Earth's magnetosphere and magnetotail.

Magnetic storms are presently intensively studied because of their potential detrimental impact on space and ground-infrastructure in the scientific context of near-Earth space plasma processes, which today is commonly referred to as “Space Weather”. While the general temporal behaviour of a geomagnetic storm and its various long-term phases is today reasonably well understood, there are still a number of open questions about the
short-term variations. While some storms (or storm-phases) exhibit smooth temporal variations, even for large amplitudes of disturbances, other storms exhibit rapid and multiple spikes (defined as periods of large dB/dt of over 1000 nT/min), which may cause the so-called “Geomagnetically Induced Currents” (GICs) discussed in Space Weather. It is not known what exactly determines the spiky nature of stormy periods as compared to other smoother periods of equally large amplitude of the total magnetic disturbances. It is therefore of relevance, both for the scientific community and for the predictability of GICs, to clarify what determines such different temporal behaviours at different times.

This is a full-time (100%) position for two years. Starting date as soon
as possible or according to agreement. The postdoctoral project will be
conducted in
close collaboration with scientists from the University of Leicester UK,
Danish Technical University Copenhagen and the Community Coordinated
Modeling
Center (CCMC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Washington USA.
Application deadline is June 2, 2019.

The full advertisement can be found at
https://www.umu.se/en/work-with-us/open-positions/postdoctoral-position-2-years-in-magnetospheric-physics_265963/

For further information, contact Maria Hamrin, maria.hamrin@space.umu.se and/or Hermann Opgenoorth, hermann.opgenoorth@space.umu.se