Postdoctoral Scholar - Open Source Earth Science Software Development and Global Atmospheric Modeling

The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Prof. Colin Zarzycki and collaborate closely with partners at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The postdoc will play a central role in both the scientific application and open-source software development of UXarray, a Python package that extends Xarray to provide native support for horizontally unstructured computational meshes used in next-generation Earth System Models (ESMs)., Software Development & Technical Contributions

• Contribute to the continued development and maintenance of UXarray, including analysis operators, grid subsetting, remapping, and plotting capabilities for unstructured mesh data.
• Help develop and maintain contributor guides and onboarding documentation to lower the barrier for external contributors.
• Support code review processes via GitHub Pull Requests following open development principles.
• Represent the UXarray project at major scientific conferences and workshops, including AGU and AMS annual meetings.
• Assist in the delivery of training workshops at universities and research centers.

Scientific Application & Validation

• Apply UXarray to real-world Earth science analysis workflows using outputs from high-resolution atmospheric, oceanic, and land surface models.
• Develop and publish Pythia Cookbooks and Jupyter-based tutorials showcasing UXarray capabilities across scientific domains (climate, weather, hydrology, ocean).
• Contribute to peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations (e.g., AGU, AMS, EGU).

The postdoc will also contribute to original research in global atmospheric modeling and weather and climate extremes, leveraging UXarray to do so. Specific activities may include:

• Conducting and analyzing global and regionally refined simulations using E3SM (including regionally refined mesh and convection-permitting configurations such as SCREAM), with a focus on high-impact weather systems including tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers, and extratropical cyclones.
• Using Betacast to initialize E3SM for hindcast experiments targeting specific extreme weather events, supporting both process-level understanding and model evaluation.
• Contributing to the evaluation of AI/ML-based Earth system emulators (e.g., ACE-E3SM, FourCastNet, NeuralGCM) against physics-based benchmarks, using process-oriented diagnostics.

• Ph.D. in atmospheric science, oceanography, Earth science, or a closely related Earth or computational science field, conferred prior to the start date.
• Demonstrated experience with scientific Python programming (e.g., NumPy, Xarray, Matplotlib, Pandas, Dask).
• Experience with version control (e.g., Git/GitHub) and collaborative software development workflows.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce clear documentation and present scientific results.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with unstructured grid data and/or numerical modeling output from weather and climate models.
• Prior contributions to open-source scientific software projects.
• Familiarity with DevOps/GitOps practices including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and containerization.
• Experience developing tutorials, training materials, or teaching workshops.
• Interest in open science principles and community-driven software development.
• Experience running and analyzing output from global or regional atmospheric models, particularly E3SM, CESM, WRF, or SCREAM., Employment with the University will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies.

The Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences at Penn State University invites applications for a full-time Postdoctoral Scholar to support the NSF-funded project “Transitioning UXarray to a Sustainable Open Source Ecosystem” (NSF POSE). This is a 12-month appointment at 100% effort, with the possibility of renewal contingent on satisfactory performance and continued funding., Penn State provides a competitive benefits package for full-time employees designed to support both personal and professional well-being.