Earth Science: Land Water Distribution with Changing Climate: Flows between Lakes, Rivers, Soils, Vegetation, and Atmosphere

The NASA Postdoctoral Program at ORAU offers research opportunities in Earth Science, focusing on land water distribution and climate change. The position requires a research proposal, letters of recommendation, and a doctoral transcript. Applicants should have experience in mathematical modeling, programming, and analyzing datasets. This is a competitive fellowship based in New York, NY, with an application deadline of July 1, 2025.
Organization

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Reference Code

0021-NPP-JUL25-GISS-EarthSci

How To Apply

All applications must be submitted in Zintellect

Please visit the NASA Postdoctoral Program website for application instructions and requirements: How to Apply | NASA Postdoctoral Program (orau.org)

A complete application to the NASA Postdoctoral Program includes:
• Research proposal
• Three letters of recommendation
• Official doctoral transcript documents

Application Deadline

7/1/2025 6:00:59 PM Eastern Time Zone

Description

About the NASA Postdoctoral Program

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

Description:

This opportunity is closed to applicants who are Senior Fellows (5-years or more past PhD).

The distribution of water on land in lakes, rivers, soils, aquifers, and vegetation varies not only seasonally but has changed through Earth's history and is undergoing shifts now with climate change as well as with human land use. These several components of land surface hydrology are not always clearly distinct from each other, as demonstrated by recent extreme climate events, like flooding, or by trends in human land use, such as draining of peatlands.

At NASA GISS, we develop and conduct experiments with an Earth System Model, ModelE, which has played a key role in predicting climate change. The land surface model in ModelE quantifies important metrics for impacts of climate change on surface temperature, precipitation, drought, lake water storage, river flow, snow, land biogeochemistry, and more.

Postdoctoral fellows are invited to propose research to investigate the role of land surface hydrology and its coupling with different aspects of the climate system. Studies could involve, but are not not limited to:
• wetlands coupling of vegetation, soils, and peatlands
• dynamics of lakes and rivers
• flooding with climate change scenarios
• model evaluation with remote sensing observations from missions such as SWOT, SMAP, GRACE, or others.

Successful applicants should have experience with mathematical modeling, computer programming, and analyzing field and remote sensing datasets. Background in the following is highly desirable: Earth, Physical, and/or Computing Sciences, advanced statistics, programming in a compiled language like C or FORTRAN95, and scripting with python or R.

Field of Science: Earth Science

Advisors:

Nancy Kiang

Nancy.Y.Kiang@nasa.gov

(212) 678-5553

Gary Russell

Gary.L.Russell@nasa.gov

(212) 678-4787

Allegra LeGrande

Allegra.N.LeGrande@nasa.gov

(212) 678-5556

Applications with citizens from Designated Countries will not be accepted at this time, unless they are Legal Permanent Residents of the United States. A complete list of Designated Countries can be found at: https://www.nasa.gov/oiir/export-control.

Eligibility is currently open to:
• U.S. Citizens;
• U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR);
• Foreign Nationals eligible for an Exchange Visitor J-1 visa status; and,
• Applicants for LPR, asylees, or refugees in the U.S. at the time of application with 1) a valid EAD card and 2) I-485 or I-589 forms in pending status

Questions about this opportunity? Please email npp@orau.org

Point of Contact

Mikeala

Eligibility Requirements
• Degree: Doctoral Degree.