Post-doctoral researcher: sustainable and healthy food solutions: system dynamics and trade-offs

École Normale Supérieure (ENS)

Founded in 1794, the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) is a higher education and research establishment whose activity covers most scientific and literary disciplines. An elite establishment which recruits the very best students in France and abroad, via the system of competitions and preparatory classes, but also by selection on application and interview, the ENS enjoys great international prestige through the quality of its students but also by the reputation of its research centers, in particular in mathematics, physics, biology, cognitive sciences, philosophy, and sciences of antiquity. The School has 37 joint research units.

The École Normale Supérieure is a member of PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres).

Recruits a Post-doctoral Researcher:

Department: Département de Géosciences de l’ENS.

Research Project: Sustainable and healthy food solutions: system dynamics and trade-offs

(FLORA – ERC Starting Grant number 101039402).

This postdoctoral research position is part of the FLORA project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Carole DALIN, in the Geosciences Department of the ENS, in the centre of Paris. The selected candidate will join the research team for up to 2 years and 8 months, collaborating with Dr Dalin and other doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in the project team, department and beyond, to answer the project’s first main research question:

“How far are current global food systems from environmental sustainability and health goals?”.

About the FLORA project:

Food systems are crucial to end hunger, but also to mitigate and adapt to climate change, to protect and restore biodiversity, to ensure human health and well-being, to end poverty, and to support sustainable communities. While hunger has receded, food systems are causing increasingly severe damage to our environment and health. The FLORA project will contribute to a transformation of global agri-food production, trade, and consumption necessary to achieve sustainable and healthy food systems.

The project will create essential evidence to identify and implement the shifts in practices and behaviours needed to effectively achieve this transformation, by (1) making a diagnosis of the integrated health and environmental outcomes of food systems globally, from the production and consumption perspectives, with innovative measures of sustainability, (2) identifying key threats and opportunities with system dynamics and complex network analyses, and (3) targeting and evaluating tailored solutions with an inter-disciplinary modelling framework.

The project will enable the identification of most effective, targeted solutions by considering trade-offs, synergies, and dynamics of key food systems components. Global in scope, it sets the ambitious goal to overcome barriers in current approaches by taking a systemic approach and establishing a robust, interdisciplinary framework supported by empirical advancements to tackle complex food systems challenges.

This innovative project builds on the PI’s excellent track record in leading interdisciplinary research focused on the global agri-food system and its environmental impacts.

 Work Environment

The selected candidate will mainly interact with researchers and students from the two laboratories at the Department of Geosciences at ENS: Dynamic Meteorology Lab (LMD, link) and Geology Lab (LG ENS, link), as well as with the Centre on Environment and Society at ENS (CERES, link).

Both LMD and LG ENS labs are parts of the interdisciplinary research federation Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL, link); a unique place for scientific exchange at the intersection of many areas of expertise in environment.

The Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) is a CNRS joint research unit, hosted by École polytechnique, École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and Sorbonne Université. LMD studies the climate and the environment for Earth and planetary atmospheres.

It is a leading international laboratory on the following themes:

Dynamic atmospheric processes for Earth and planetary atmospheres; Surface/atmosphere interactions (including land and ocean surfaces); Water cycle and clouds; Atmospheric composition, pollution and large-scale transport; Global and regional climate variability and change; Societal impacts (health and energy).

The Laboratoire de Géologie de l’ENS (LG ENS) is a joint research unit between the CNRS and ENS-PSL, founded in 1880. Built on a long tradition in Earth and Environmental Sciences, it houses research that covers a range of fields including – Geology, Geomorphology, and Hydrogeology – making it a privileged place for exchanges at thematic borders.

This project offers collaboration opportunities with the Surface and Reservoir team (link) of the LG ENS. It is a multidisciplinary team focusing on soils/subsoils and flows of material (erosion), carbon, and water. These themes are related to the atmosphere and climate, whether at time scales of (i) the paleoclimate, (ii) the meteorological event (erosion, landslide, flood, drought) or (iii) the coming century.

Chercheur en modélisation LES – Climaviation

Présentation de Sorbonne Université :

Pour transmettre les connaissances, comprendre le monde et relever les défis du 21e siècle, une nouvelle université est
née le 1er janvier 2018, issue de la fusion entre les universités Paris-Sorbonne et Pierre et Marie Curie. Sorbonne Université
est une université pluridisciplinaire, de recherche intensive et de rang mondial. Ancrée au cœur de Paris, présente en
région, elle est engagée pour la réussite de ses étudiants et s’attache à répondre aux enjeux scientifiques du 21e siècle.
www.sorbonne-universite.fr

Présentation de la structure :

L’Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL) fédère 9 laboratoires dont les thématiques de recherche concernent les sciences du climat et de l’environnement de l’échelle régionale à globale. L’IPSL pilote et participe à plusieurs projets nationaux et européens. Les projets appliqués visant à faciliter les politiques d’adaptation au changement climatique ou d’atténuation au changement climatique prennent une part croissante dans les activités de l’Institut.

Ce poste fait partie du projet Climaviation (https://www.climaviation.fr), un partenariat entre Sorbonne Université et l’Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA), financé par la Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile (DGAC).

Ce projet a pour but d’améliorer la compréhension scientifique des impacts climatiques de l’aviation. Les objectifs du projet
sont :

1) Mieux quantifier les impacts climatiques de l’aviation, en particulier les impacts « non-CO2 » sur les traînées, les nuages et la chimie atmosphérique,

2) Evaluer les impacts liés aux nouveaux combustibles comme les hydrocarbures synthétiques ou l’hydrogène,

3) Proposer des solutions permettant de minimiser ces impacts climatiques.

Localisation : Votre bureau sera situé à l’Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL) sur le campus Pierre-et-Marie-Curie
(Jussieu) de Sorbonne Université à Paris. Des réunions de travail auront lieu à Palaiseau (ONERA), Saclay (LSCE) et
Toulouse.

Gestion financier(e) et comptable

Composante, service, laboratoire de rattachement : OVSQ, IPSL (Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace).

L’IPSL est une Fédération de Recherche du CNRS qui regroupe 8 laboratoires et 2 équipes associées de la Région Parisienne impliqués dans la recherche sur le climat et le changement climatique. Son effectif propre est de l’ordre de 70 ingénieurs et techniciens. Le Service Administration de l’Institut est implanté sur deux sites : Guyancourt (site de l’Observatoire de Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines) et Paris (Campus Pierre et Marie Curie de Sorbonne Université).

La personne sera recrutée au sein de l’équipe de gestion financière et rattachée au Service Administration de l’IPSL (6 personnes).

Localisation géographique : Guyancourt ou Paris (Avec des déplacements à prévoir à Guyancourt dans ce cas).

Poste Catégorie B : Rémunération à partir de (Technicien avec 3 à 5 ans d’expérience), selon expérience.

Researcher on near real time CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas budgets

We are looking for a motivated young researcher to analyze new datasets providing the first near
real time estimates of global and regional greenhouse gas fluxes at global and regional scales based on in-situ and space observations. The research will use near real time emissions of fossil CO₂ from Carbon Monitor https://carbonmonitor.org , fossil CH₄ from the Global Methane Watch
https://www.kayrros.com/methane-watch/, atmospheric inversions, near real time dynamic
vegetation models results, air sea fluxes from data driven models, biomass change from satellites,
fire and land use change CO₂ emissions.

The goal is to produce novel analysis of the impact of extreme climate events and ongoing
socioeconomic changes on the most recent greenhouse gas emissions and sinks with a low latency, typically with an update of a few months.

The second part of the research is on the improvement of near real time fossil CO₂ emissions
estimates for EU countries based on the Carbon Monitor methodology, with new activity data being collected, based on satellite data and other proxies. This part of the research will be performed in collaboration with the COPERNICUS atmospheric core service (CAMS) and will involve regular interactions with teams at the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF).

The successful candidate will work closely with Philippe Ciais and Frederic Chevallier in Gif sur
Yvette, France, with other partners of the international near real time GHG initiative, A Bastos, S
Sitch, Z. Liu, S. Saatchi, N Gruber, J. Randerson, and with ECMWF teams for European CO₂ emissions.

Researcher on greenhouse gas emissions estimates from atmospheric measurements in support of the Paris agreement

Monitoring emissions and sinks of the main greenhouse gases CO2, CH4 and N2O is essential for
tracking the effectiveness of mitigation actions for the Paris Agreement on Climate, now more than
ever, with recent pledges made in Glasgow and the upcoming Global Stock Take. We are looking for a
motivated young researcher to analyze atmospheric inversions results for the three greenhouse
gases, in particular the inversions recently synthesized by the Global Carbon Project in the CO2
budget, the CH4 budget and forthcoming N2O budget publications.

The goal is to develop new tools and analysis methods to estimate regional and national budgets of
these greenhouse gases. Comparison between atmospheric inversions and inventories was
pioneered in our recent research by Deng et al. 2022 whose results attracted a wide interest from
the media at the COP26. The outcome of the research will the development of new approaches for
the separation of natural and anthropogenic emissions, the separation of fluxes between managed
and un-managed land and policy relevant information on anthropogenic emissions per sector.
This work will be performed as part of the RECCAP2 project of the ESA Climate Change Initiative and
will involve a dialogue with national inventory agencies, with a special focus to support the provision
of improved estimates of emissions in developing countries. At least one high impact publication is
foreseen from this work in the course of the global-stock take of the Paris Agreement, to bring to
policy the latest atmospheric research.

The successful candidate will work closely with Philippe Ciais, Marielle Saunois and Frederic
Chevallier in Gif sur Yvette, France, with the other members of the project, and several students.