Visiting Researcher – Rugenstein Research Group

Job Description Position Summary The Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University is a large academic and research department in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering. We currently have twenty-three faculty members, ninety graduate students, over seventy full-time researchers and postdoctoral fellows, and an outstanding and dedicated support staff, that comprise one of the most research-active units at the university. The department conducts more than $14M in externally sponsored research each year and is nationally ranked near the top of its field.

The Rugenstein Research Group focusses on large-scale climate dynamics and ocean-atmosphere interaction. We study the Earth’s energy balance, how radiative feedbacks depend on surface warming patterns, ocean heat uptake, US hydroclimate, and hemispheric albedo symmetry.

Full Consideration Date: February 18, 2026

Essential Duties

• Identify and compile pales-records from the eastern and western equatorial Pacific that are sensitive to sea surface temperature and Walker circulation changes, and apply transfer functions to estimate the Pacific equatorial SST gradient.
• Compare the reconstructed gradient and its timescale dependence with simulations from climate and Earth system models over the past millennium and Late Holocene.
• Analyze changes in internal variability feedbacks in an Earth system model experiment in which SSTs are nudged based on information from paleo-data, providing a simulation where the amplitude of climate variability increases with timescale as suggested by proxy data.

Conditions of Employment Background Check (required for all new hires)

Supervision This position does not have any supervision responsibilities.

Minimum Qualifications

• PhD in Atmospheric Science
• Fellowship awarded by Alexander-von-Humboldt association

Salary Range $34.00 / hour

Required Application Documents To apply, please upload the following applicant documents. Ensure your materials fully address the required and preferred job qualifications of the position. Please note, applicants may redact information from their application materials that identifies their age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

No Documents Required

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