Post-doctoral position in statistics applied to snow avalanche climatology
38 402 Saint martin d'heres
INRAE presentation
The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.
Work environment, missions and activities
You will be hosted at Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE), a public research laboratory in Earth and Environmental Sciences from CNRS/INSU, IRD, Grenoble Alpes University, INRAE and Grenoble-INP. Within IGE, the ECRINS team focuses its activities on rapid mass movements, related risks and the cryosphere in mountains. The ECRIN team develops knowledge and methods on processes, hazards; as well as on evolution of risks and their components, risk assessment and mitigation, and decision support. For instance, ECRINS has internationally recognized expertise in the development and implementation of advanced statistical methods in the field of mountain risks, notably snow avalanches. These methods make it possible to quantify hazard and risk and how these relate to climate conditions and changes at short- and long-term (see references below).
In this context, you will be responsible for developing and implementing statistical models allowing the analysis of avalanche activity and its links with weather and climate conditions. The objectives are i) the improvement of statistical models for daily forecasting, ii) the quantification of changes in activity and their control by climate change at annual to decadal time scales. The targeted areas are the French Alps and the Aosta Valley (Italy). For the latter, the work will be carried out in close partnership with the Montagne Sure Foundation (FMS), as part of the PREVRISK-CC project. The work will also benefit from regular exchanges with Météo France’s Snow Study Center, with which long-standing collaborations have been established for studying the climatology of snow avalanches. Finally, this position is integrated within the PEPR IRIMA, a large research program on risks in France, and the Grenoble Risk Institute. This environment, will allow stimulating and fruitful exchanges with a large community.
In this context, you will be more specifically in charge of:
References:
Eckert, N., Keylock, C. J., Castebrunet, H., Lavigne, A., & Naaim, M. (2013). Temporal trends in avalanche activity in the French Alps and subregions: from occurrences and runout altitudes to unsteady return periods. Journal of Glaciology, 59(213), 93-114.
Lavigne, A., Eckert, N., Bel, L., & Parent, E. (2015). Adding expert contributions to the spatiotemporal modelling of avalanche activity under different climatic influences. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, 64(4), 651-671.
Sielenou, P. D., Viallon-Galinier, L., Hagenmuller, P., Naveau, P., Morin, S., Dumont, M., ... & Eckert, N. (2021). Combining random forests and class-balancing to discriminate between three classes of avalanche activity in the French Alps. Cold Regions Science and Technology, 187, 103276.
Evin, G., Sielenou, P. D., Eckert, N., Naveau, P., Hagenmuller, P., & Morin, S. (2021). Extreme avalanche cycles: Return levels and probability distributions depending on snow and meteorological conditions. Weather and Climate Extremes, 33, 100344.
Giacona, F., Eckert, N., Corona, C., Mainieri, R., Morin, S., Stoffel, M., ... & Naaim, M. (2021). Upslope migration of snow avalanches in a warming climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(44), e2107306118.
Training and skills
PhD
INRAE's life quality
By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):
- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.
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