Postdoctoral Associates - Sea Level Rise Projections and Climate Risk Assessment & Management

The Rutgers University Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences invites applications for highly motivated, creative postdoctoral associates with interests in (a) sea-level rise projections and/or (b) climate risk assessment and management. The candidate will join the Rutgers University Earth System Science & Policy Lab (earthscipol.net), under the direction of Professor Robert Kopp, and its collaborators in the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH), the NASA Sea-Level Change Team, and the Climate Impact Lab.

Research in the Earth System Science & Policy Lab addresses four interrelated questions: First, how has sea level changed in the past? Second, how may sea level change in the future in response to climate forcing? Third, how do climate and sea-level change impact the economy and human well-being? Finally, how can climate and sea-level science more effectively support climate risk management under deep uncertainty? The Lab’s sea-level projections are highly used; the Framework for Assessment of Changes To Sea-level (FACTS; https://www.fact-sealevel.org/), an open-source sea-level projection framework initially developed by the lab, supported the integration of projections for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report.

Working in coordination with the FACTS development team at the Climate Impact Lab and with collaborators in the NASA Sea-Level Change Team, the postdoctoral associate may have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the scientific community’s next generation of sea-level rise projections, following a workplan to be developed at the June 2026 AGU Chapman Conference on Updating Usable Projections of Sea-Level Rise (https://www.agu.org/chapman-sea-level). In this context, the integration into global, relative, and extreme sea-level projections of knowledge related to potential high-impact events of poorly-known likelihood, such as ice-sheet or AMOC collapse, is of particular interest, as is the integration of observational constraints. Interest in or experience with the development of emulators of complex models is also valuable.

The postdoctoral associate may also have the opportunity to work with colleagues in MACH and the Climate Impact Lab on topics such as the valuation of coastal climate risk information, the use of market mechanisms such as insurance to manage coastal climate risk, and the simulation of adaptation decision-making under deep uncertainty.

The position will be based at Rutgers-New Brunswick. The position is a grant-funded annual position. Renewal for up to three years is possible subject to performance and availability of funding.