UCL/MSSL has a vacancy for a post-doctoral or equivalent scientist funded by the ESA GlobAlbedo and ESA ADAM projects to join Prof. Jan-Peter Muller’s Imaging Group in a collaboration with Prof. P. Lewis of UCL Geography. Prof. Muller’s Imaging group is engaged in developing, processing and validating climate quality global datasets (including albedo and cloud properties), primarily from EO sensors, for inter-comparison with other planets, such as Mars and in the analysis of Sun-planetary connections to planetary climate. Prof. Muller is part of the atmospheric composition group in the NERC National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).

The UCL Geography group, led by Prof. Lewis specialize in radiative transfer modelling and associated monitoring of terrestrial vegetation (including albedo and fire impacts) from remote sensing. They also have expertise in linking such information to terrestrial Carbon models and are part of the NERC National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).

[GlobAlbedo]: The successful applicant will be engaged in processing up to 15.5 years of 1km broadband land surface albedo from spectral BroadBand Directional Reflectance (BBDR) from (A)ATSR(2), VEGETATION (both BBDRs from Swansea University) and MERIS (from Free University Berlin) using unique approaches developed within the project, working with the implementation team at Brockmann Consult (Hamburg) who implemented a processing chain based on the ESA BEAM (Java) toolkit. There is a large linux cluster and massive RAID array with LT05 tape robot backup. Tools have been developed for monitoring these processing but further work will be required to automate the optimization of this large-scale processing system. The successful applicant will also work on validation of the products through inter-comparison with other EO albedo datasets (e.g. MISR, MODIS, POLDER) as well as tower and in situ based albedometer measurements provided by collaborators in FLUXNET, BSRN and EOS. Support for our groups of users at several international institutions will also be required. A web-GIS system based on a pre-existing OpenLayers and UMMS Mapserver web-GIS will be required to be developed for display of single date as well as animated-temporal and for extraction of single point temporal profiles for subsequent plotting.

[ADAM] Using the unique optimal estimation approach developed within the GlobAlbedo project, spectral albedos will be derived from MODIS, MERIS and VEGETATION. This requires modification of IDL and Python scripts for the processing of 2005 datasets for MERIS and VEGETATION and the whole of the MODIS time record from March 2000.

In addition, the applicant would be expected to collaborate with other members of the Imaging group working on machine vision applications to EO and planetary datasets.

MSSL is a multi-disciplinary laboratory, with a long track record in the design, build, operation and exploitation of EO, space and astrophysics instrumentation. MSSL was selected by ESA to develop the CRYOSAT instrument and has previously been involved in radiometric calibration of the (A)ATSR(2) series of SST measurements.

Please apply online for this post at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/vacancies/adverts/job-list.html (Ref. 1203825)

If there are any difficulties please contact Libby Daghorn (ead[at]mssl.ucl.ac.uk)

Closing date for applications is 15 September 2011.

Interviews will take place (either by SKYPE or in person) on Monday, 3rd October 2011.

Further Details

Full particulars about the post including the job description and person specification are available.

This appointment is subject to UCL Terms and Conditions of Service for Research and Support Staff. Please go to http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/salary_scales/Support_Research_tcs.php to view the terms and conditions.

Further information about MSSL in general can be found at http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk

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This page last modified 24 August, 2011 by www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk