Postdoctoral Researcher

**Job Reference**:

- 52_25_ES_CVC_R2

**Position**:

- Postdoctoral Researcher - climate impacts on food prices (R2)

**Closing Date**:

- Thursday, 20 February, 2025

**Reference**: 52_25_ES_CVC_R2

**Job title**: Postdoctoral Researcher - climate impacts on food prices (R2)

**About BSC**
- The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.

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**Context And Mission**
- The impacts of climate change on food systems are intensifying worldwide, with recent weather extremes driving spikes in the price of staple foods in many countries. Food prices have recently been identified as the second most frequent way in which people are directly experiencing the impacts of climate change, and these impacts can have both political and health related consequences. Limiting these impacts requires detailed understanding of the agricultural impacts from weather extremes and climate change, as well as accurate projections of their future changes and risks.

The CVG group conducts state-of-the-art research on climate change focussing on understanding drivers and obtaining accurate predictions of changing conditions and weather extremes. The group works closely with other related groups at BSC which focus on delivering sector-relevant climate information to the public sector to inform adaptation (the Climate Services group) and assess the health consequences of climate change (the Global Health Resilience group).

**Key Duties**
- Build statistical models for the impact of climate conditions on food prices in the UK and Europe
- Harness sectoral trade data to identify food dependencies in the UK and vulnerabilities abroad
- Explore sensitivities of food prices to a range of climate indicators relevant to agricultural production in the UK and relevant trade partners
- Incorporate data on future climate change from large scale modelling efforts (e.g. CMIP) and more other information of future climate (decadal predictions, regional climate modelling)
- Interact with health scientist project partners in the UK to tailor research output for evaluating health consequences
- Contribute to the framing of policy-relevant reports on the consequences of climate change for UK food prices, health and the wider food system
- Interact with scientists in the group, department, center and other institutions in Barcelona to enhance synergies
- Engage with stakeholders and policy makers locally and in the UK
- Support administrative duties of the group, including arranging meetings, taking minutes, writing deliverable and mission reports, maintaining Wiki/webpages, etc.

**Requirements**:

- Education
- BSc and MSc in Physics, Mathematics, Statistics, Environmental Sciences, Economics (or equivalent)
- PhD in climate change impacts, climate change, weather extremes, environmental economics
- Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
- Experience in data management and statistical analyses
- Strong programming skills in a suitable language (e.g., R/Python, ideally both)
- Experience with geospatial climate data and/or statistical modelling of climate change impacts
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, demonstrated in scientific publications and well documented repositories
- Ability to work in a collaborative professional environment within an inter-disciplinary and international team
- Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
- Fluency in English is essential. Proficiency in Spanish and other languages would be advantageous
- Experience with panel econometrics
- Experience with climate change projections
- Experience with statistical downscaling and bias adjustments techniques
- Experience harmonising various types of data (e.g., climate, land-use, macroeconomic, trade)
- Experience with Linux environments and scripting languages (e.g., bash)
- Competences
- Ability to work in a team and in a multi-cultural environment
- Problem-solving, proactive, result-oriented work attitude
- Excellent communication skills (oral and written)
- Ability t