Postdoctoral Researcher in Satellite Glaciology

Are you establishing your career in Earth Observation or glaciology, and want to pioneer the first application of a novel satellite dataset to study the Greenland Ice Sheet? 

Join the Geodesy and Earth Observation (GEO) Division at DTU Space, where you will help re-imagine the SWOT satellite mission – originally built to map ocean and river water levels – for an experimental application: Tracking meltwater as it travels deep beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet. If successful, your work could open a window into the ice sheet's hidden hydrology and reshape how we predict its future in a warming climate.

Responsibilities and qualifications
As a postdoc on the SWOT-ICE Experiment, your main task will be to develop and apply new methods for extracting meaningful surface elevation-change signals from the SWOT satellite's measurements over the Greenland Ice Sheet. You will process and correct the SWOT elevation data, which is currently unreliable over the steep, evolving ice due to issues such as geolocation offsets, and combine the resulting elevation-change fields with SWOT's backscatter data to search for signatures of how meltwater is stored and routed beneath the ice.

Your primary tasks will be to:

• Develop a processing framework for SWOT altimetry over the Greenland Ice Sheet, including a method to identify and correct geolocation offsets between repeat passes
• Extract and validate near-continuous time series of surface elevation change from SWOT data against ICESat-2 laser altimetry
• Combine elevation-change and backscatter observations to investigate signatures of subglacial hydrological activity
• Interpret the results in the context of current understanding of hydrologically driven ice dynamics
• Present findings at international conferences and publish results in peer-reviewed journals
• Contribute to the broader research environment at DTU Space, including collaboration with colleagues and partners
• Contribute to a limited amount of teaching within DTU Space's course portfolio

You will be part of the Cryosphere Research group – a fast-growing, dedicated research team in the GEO Division – and will have considerable independence in shaping the direction of the analysis.

As a candidate, you should have:

• A strong quantitative background in remote sensing, satellite geodesy, glaciology, or a closely related field
• Solid programming and data-analysis skills (ideally in Python) for working with large datasets
• Experience working with Earth Observation data, ideally including satellite altimetry  
• An independent and curious approach to research, and comfort working with unproven methods on an exploratory project