Postdoc position (f/m/d) Team leader »Mesoscale-Microscale Modelling in Energy Meteorology«

To increase the efficiency and reliability of wind energy production, it is crucial to simulate atmospheric processes across various scales. As wind energy expands, particularly offshore, understanding larger-scale atmospheric interactions becomes critical, e.g. for mitigating negative wake impacts on a regional scale. At the same time, knowledge of the local turbulent flow remains important for accurately resolving smaller-scale atmospheric interactions with individual wind turbines.

In addition to enhanced knowledge, the wind energy community requires validated, accelerated workflows that capture relevant physical flow features. This can significantly reduce uncertainty in the calculation of wake effects at large scales. This is particularly relevant for the German situation, with the most densely planned offshore wind farm clusters in the world.

Job description

You will lead the team »Mesoscale-Microscale Modelling« with PhD candidates and PostDocs contributing to the further development of atmospheric modelling tools that can cover all scales from the meso- to the microscale, while focusing on meso-scale effects, e.g.,

• improving mesoscale models for simulating the near-coastal marine atmospheric boundary layer, with its challenging heterogeneous surface conditions that are also strongly time-varying.
• developing an AI-based method to refine information from mesoscale simulations of the atmosphere into high-spatial-resolution information on wind and wave conditions in the German Bight.
• developing and validating wind farm parameterisations in meso-scale models,
• investigating the effects of innovative wind turbine and wind farm designs on the regional scale and on the energy system.
• fundamentally increasing the accuracy of flow simulations for offshore wind energy applications by coupling atmospheric and oceanic models.

Further tasks include

• contributing to the conceptualisation, acquisition and management of third-party funded projects,
• active participation in the planning and implementation of teaching,
• co-supervising PhD candidates, Bachelor's and Master's students
• presenting scientific results at international conferences and through peer-reviewed publications.

Job offer

We offer you the opportunity to further develop your scientific career in a young and lively academic environment. You will be working in the WindLab – one of the university's most modern office and lab spaces – and have the opportunity to do flexible and mobile work. Your pathway as a researcher is actively supported by, e.g.,

• multidisciplinary cooperation with other researchers at ForWind and Fraunhofer IWES in Oldenburg,
• direct collaboration with industry and national and international partners in academia,
• optional secondment at an international research institute
• development of personal, scientific, and teaching skills through an individual training programme and selected teaching tasks,
• development of management skills by coordinating joint research projects and leading a research team.

The payment is based on the collective agreement for the public service in the German federal states, TV-L E13, for a 100% position and initially limited to three years.

For your work, you will have access to our high-performance computing systems installed in 2023 and to a regional HPC cluster that enables cutting-edge simulations. You will work in a team with over two decades of experience in numerical fluid dynamics and in the simulation of atmospheric flows using the mesoscale model WRF and the LES model PALM. You can access measurement data from a unique worldwide research wind farm for validation purposes.

Our standards

• The University of Oldenburg is dedicated to increase the percentage of female employees in the field of science. Therefore, female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. In accordance to § 21 Section 3 NHG, female candidates with equal qualifications will be preferentially considered. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference in case of equal qualification.
• Further, the university fosters a family-friendly working environment and offers a family service centre and on-campus children’s day care.

Further benefits

• Secure remuneration according to collective agreement
• 30 days vacation
• Company pension scheme
• Further training opportunities
• Flexible working hours
• Health management
• Mobile working
• Compatibility of career and family

Candidate profile

Requirements for employment include:

• PhD degree in Meteorology, Physical or Geophysical Sciences, Mechanical Engineering or in a similar field,
• university degree (diploma or master's) in Meteorology, Geophysical Sciences, Physical Sciences, Oceanography, Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering, or in a similar field,
• profound knowledge in boundary-layer physics and the analysis of turbulence resolving measurement data
• profound knowledge in either mesoscale modelling (preferably in WRF) or atmospheric large-eddy simulations,
• publication track record in international scientific journals and conferences,
• fluency in communicating and reporting in English. Desired qualifications
• experience in modelling the interaction between the atmospheric boundary layer and wind energy systems
• experience in the analysis of meteorological measurements, e.g. lidar
• coordination of research projects
• experience in project acquisition
• German writing and communication skills

Further information on the research environment

Wind energy research at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg has gained international recognition by its integration into ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hannover and Bremen and the national Wind Energy Research Alliance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES) and ForWind.

At ForWind, we maintain and value collaboration between our research groups and partner institutions such as the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE) members. In Oldenburg, our 50 researchers from physics, meteorology and engineering are collaborating at the »Research Laboratory for Turbulence and Wind Energy Systems« centred on wind physics. Our mission is to develop an improved understanding of atmospheric and wind power plant flow physics required to serve the global demand for clean and affordable electricity. Therefore, we conduct laboratory experiments, free-field measurements and HPC-based numerical simulations. The main topics include the description and modelling of wind turbulence, the analysis of interactions of turbulent atmospheric wind flow and wind energy systems, as well as control of wind turbines and wind farms. The covered scales range from small-scale turbulence up to meteorological phenomena. Our research facilities comprise three turbulent wind tunnels, various equipment for free-field measurements at on- and offshore wind farms and a high- performance computing cluster. Almost all our projects combine analyses at more than one of these infrastructures.