The Hydrological Sciences Branch - Code 614.3

The Hydrological Sciences Branch (formerly Code 974) is a branch of the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Water is critical to sustaining life on Earth, and helps to tie together the Earth's lands, oceans, and atmosphere into an integrated physical system. Here, at the Hydrological Sciences Branch, we recognize the primary role of water in the Earth system, and seek a deeper insight into the science and physical principles underlying hydrology from local to global perspectives.

Employment Opportunities

Potential Terrestrial Water Cycle Civil Servant Positions
The Goddard Space Flight Center’s Earth sciences hiring needs are based on Agency and National strategic Earth science goals, as expressed in the recent National Research Council Decadal Survey Report, the International Program for Climate Change, the Climate Change Science Program, and on a careful analysis of our current staff. In response to these analyses we need to immediately institute a program of hiring up to ten new science staff. These scientists will have an unparalleled opportunity to be involved in critical Earth science research that will define our understanding of our planet’s climate.

If you are interested, please follow application instructions at the website following: http://pita.gsfc.nasa.gov/metadot/index.pl?id=2910.

Research Associate: Land surface modeling and data assimilation specialist
We now invite applications for a land surface modeling and data assimilation specialist, to be hired through a cooperative agreement with one of GSFC's university affiliates. Duties will include:

1. implementation and optimization of existing approaches for assimilating satellite observations of various water and energy cycle variables into land surface models driven by NASA's Land Information System (LIS; http://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov/) / Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS; http://ldas.gsfc.nasa.gov/);
2. design and testing of algorithms for simulating groundwater storage and runoff in these models;
3. performing specialized simulations over regions of interest;
4. analysis of results.

The primary goal of this work is to use remote sensing data to better describe hydroclimatic variability and improve water resources planning. Candidates must be skilled in FORTRAN programming and data visualization (e.g., GrADS). The most highly qualified candidates will have experience in land surface modeling, remote sensing, and/or data assimilation. The ability to communicate results effectively both orally and in written publications will be crucial. Some travel will be required. A Masters Degree or Ph.D. in a relevant field of Earth science or computer science must be held or imminent at the time of hire. Salary will be commensurate with experience. The position will remain open until filled, however, for full consideration, please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and list of three professional references via email by 15 May 2008. NASA and its university affiliates are Equal Opportunity employers.

Research Associate: Land-Atmosphere Modeling and Data Assimilation
Summary
The candidate will support hydrometeorological and hydroclimatological research activities within the Hydrological Sciences Branch of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The position will be filled through a contracting company or a cooperative agreement with one of GSFC's university affiliates. Possible areas of work include 1. the ongoing North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) drought monitoring project; 2. a new flash flood prediction project; and 3. ongoing projects on land-atmosphere interactions and advanced techniques for coupled weather forecasting. The NLDAS drought monitoring effort is an ongoing project whose main goal is to implement an ensemble LSM-based real-time drought monitor. Modeling techniques are based on the approaches developed within the multi-institution NLDAS project. Work will be conducted using NASA's Land Information System (LIS) modeling framework, and the candidate may also support general NLDAS collaborative research activities including data dissemination, land surface modeling, forcing data set generation, and web site support. Research within the flash flood project will also make use of the LIS modeling framework, and will involve execution of both uncoupled land surface simulations and coupled WRF simulations, as well as assimilation of remotely sensed snow data. High resolution precipitation forecasts from WRF ensembles will be used to drive hydrological models and support predictions of flash flood events. The ongoing projects on land-atmosphere interactions and advanced techniques for coupled weather forecasting involve further development and application of the coupled LIS-WRF system for studying land surface boundary layer interactions, the role of the land surface in convective initiation, and multifrequency radiative transfer at the mesoscale. The ideal candidate will have experience in the following areas: 1. land surface modeling; 2. mesoscale weather forecasting; and/or 3. land surface data assimilation.

Education
Position requires a M.S. or PhD in Atmospheric Science, Hydrology, or in a related physical science field.

Required Skills
Candidates with experience running LIS, WRF, and/or land surface modeling systems are highly desired. The candidate must have a solid background in writing programs and scripts using Fortran 90 and Unix/Linux. Experience with at least 2 of the following aspects of numerical modeling is required: observation preparation/quality control, data analysis/assimilation, model development, physical parameterizations, post processing/product generation, website development and product dissemination. The successful candidate will deal effectively with colleagues, meet deadlines, perform critical analyses of data, assess and validate results, work on several projects simultaneously and communicate effectively. In addition, the candidate must be detail-oriented and possess good organization and time management skills.

Desired Skills
Experience with data assimilation or land-atmosphere interactions is an advantage. Familiarity with GRIB, HDF, netCDF, and BUFR data formats and experience with GrADS, IDL, Matlab (or other visualization packages), Javascript, and Perl is also a plus.

Please send all resumes to Dr. Christa Peters-Lidard, Head, Hydrological Sciences Branch, at Christa.Peters@nasa.gov.

Hydrological Sciences Branch Features

Our Science Highlights are published monthly to our web site. Each report is fully viewable online as JPG files. The PowerPoint files are also archived and freely available for download. Go to the Science Highlights Library

Student, Post-Doc, and Faculty Opportunities

Our Web Sites

Land Information System (LIS) The award-winning Land Information System (LIS) is a high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation system, based on GSFC's Land Data Assimilation Systems. This site provides LIS source codes and sample data to registered users. + Visit the Land Information System web site

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