NASA Postdoctoral Program - Stratospheric Composition in a Changing Climate

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity seeks a postdoctoral scholar to conduct in-depth analysis of stratospheric data, using data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) as well as complementary datasets like the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) and the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) on the International Space Station (ISS). In recent years, Earth's stratospheric composition has been significantly perturbed, with potential implications for climate and ozone layer stability. Among the most notable events were the Australian New Year's fires and the Hunga eruption. The record-breaking injection of smoke plumes into the stratosphere by the 2019/2020 Australian bushfires led to a prolonged and widespread perturbation in stratospheric chlorine behavior. The Hunga eruption in January 2022 not only caused the largest increase in stratospheric aerosol loading in the past 30 years but also injected 150 Tg of water directly into the stratosphere, instantaneously increasing stratospheric water vapor mass by around 10%. Potential research areas include, but are not limited to, the impact of large wildfires on the stratosphere, effects of volcanic eruptions, long-term trends in atmospheric composition, and the transport of pollutants into the stratosphere during the Asian Summer Monsoon.