The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium wants to hire a scientist to support the Earth Radiation Budget projects of its Remote Sensing from Space division.

The scientist will primarily support our participation in the calibration and validation of the products of the Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE, see https://www.meteo.be/en/projects/earthcare) satellite. This ESA satellite is going to be launched end of May 2024 and the launch will be followed by a 6-month commissioning period for the 4 instruments and 3 years of operational data acquisition. The collected data will advance our understanding of the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface.

The scientist will be in charge of validating the data of the BroadBand Radiometer (BBR), one of the 4 instruments on EarthCARE.

Tasks:

• Review and understand the validation approaches that have been deployed in previous missions, e.g. CERES, ScaRaB, GERB.
• Review and understand the working principle of the BBR instrument, its data processing and product’s formats.
• Perform an analysis of the requirements for the tools to be implemented for the validation of the BBR level 1 (radiances) and level 2 (fluxes) products.
• Implement these tools using an efficient programming language able to handle large amount of BBR data in an efficient way.
• Once the BBR instrument is activated, collect and organize the relevant commissioning data, e.g. via FTP or other file transfer mechanisms.
• Perform a first, fast and mostly qualitative, evaluation of the commissioning data (mostly level 1) and report findings at the bi-weekly meetings of the BBR Instrument Calibration Team.
• In a second time, perform the comprehensive quantitative validation of the BBR products (including the level 2), in particular by inter-comparison with other space instruments.
• Based on the validation results, propose algorithm improvements for possible implementation by the team in charge of the level 2 processors.  
• Participate and present results at ESA reviews and at EarthCARE validation workshops organized at ESRIN in Frascati (IT) and JAXA in Tokyo (JP).

Required competences:

• A PhD/Master in natural sciences and/or engineering. If you obtained your master's degree and/or PHD outside the Benelux, you must also have a equivalence recognition from a foreign diploma or certificate in Flanders (NARIC) or Wallonia (CFWB) for the master’s degree and/or phd degree
• Affinity with scientific research in geophysics, e.g. in meteorology, climatology, or satellite remote sensing of the Earth.
• Working experience with the UNIX/Linux operating system and at least one programming language is mandatory
• The following elements are assets: (i) experience with the measurement of the Earth radiation Budget from satellites (CERES, GERB, EarthCARE, ...), (ii) participation in Cal/Val activities of space instruments, (iii) working experience with the C programming language.
• Good working knowledge of English.

We offer:

We offer a long term contract, at the SW1 or SW2 salary scale (based on diploma and expertise), starting on 1^st July 2024.

Application:

Candidates, who must be Citizen of the European Economic Area or Switzerland, should send their CV and motivation letter to Nicolas.Clerbaux@meteo.be. The position is open until 3 May 2024. Additional information can be obtained from Nicolas.Clerbaux@meteo.be.