Bando per assegno di ricerca di 18 mesi (rinnovabili) presso l’UniMi

AISAM é lieta di segnalare Si segnala l’apertura un bando per assegno di ricerca di 18 mesi (rinnovabili) con selezione, per titoli e colloquio, di n. 1 candidati presso il Gruppo di Ricerca Clima dell’Università degli Studi di Milano – Dipartimento di Scienze e Politiche Ambientali. E’ possibile inoltrare la propria candidatura entro il 10 Novembre 2023.

Le attività dell’assegnista si collocheranno nell’ambito del progetto PRIN CCHP-ALPS – Climate Change and HydroPower in the Alps:

• La definizione delle serie termometriche e pluviometriche giornaliere da usare nell’ambito del progetto;
• La proiezione dei dati termometrici e pluviometrici giornalieri su una griglia ad alta risoluzione che copre l’intero bacino del Po;
• Il downscaling di serie di scenario (temperature e precipitazioni) sulla precedente griglia;

Di seguito é possibile trovare l’abstract del progetto:

Global warming severely affects Alpine hydrology, especially impacting winter storage and slow release of water from snow/ice melt during spring/summer. Changes in water availability and seasonality affect
hydropower production, which in Italy has a fundamental role in the energy sector. In fact, not only water provides a large share of the energy production, but back pumping of water and repeated exploitation provide large energy storage, hardly feasible with other means.

Within this context, the project CCHP-ALPS – Climate Change and HydroPower in the Alps aims at assessing the impact of past and projected climate change upon hydropower potential of the Po river catchment, which gathers a large share of water from the Southern Alps.

We will investigate a “long-term” period, from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 21stone, i.e. more than 120 years of observations and in the future several decades of projections.

First, we will setup 30-arc-second-resolution daily minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation fields for the entire investigated region.
These fields will be obtained by means of the anomaly method, combining spatial fields of climatologies and spatio-temporal fields of anomalies.

Secondly, we will calibrate, and run two models allowing to capture relevant features of the hydrological cycle. Namely, we will use i) spatially explicit snow pack models, to obtain spatio-temporal fields of
snow cover and snow water equivalent, starting from daily temperature and precipitation data, and ii) glacio-hydrological models, physically based and semi-distributed, to assess water contribution from the
cryospheric areas of the Alps.

Thirdly, we will assess the impact of climate change upon hydropower potential of the Po river catchment. Specifically, we will consider a “virtual” Po river catchment setup, without regulation from
reservoirs, and we will study the “long-term” evolution of hydropower potential, and the corresponding seasonality. Moreover, for some relevant sub-catchments, we will consider past and future
hydropower potential under the present situation, i.e. regulation using reservoirs/lakes.

Finally, we will investigate adaptation strategies, to mitigate changes in the amount and seasonality of river runoff under projected climate change, especially under the expected reduction of snow-accumulation, as largely observed recently.

These objectives may be considered overly ambitious for a 2-year project. They are however reasonable because the project research team has well-established methodologies for setting up long term
climatologies, and it already possesses a large dataset of meteorological records for the investigated area, and great expertise in the homogenisation of such records. Moreover, it has a large expertise in hydrological modelling in complex cryospheric environments, including the Alps, and impact upon hydropower production therein, under present and future projected climate.

Per ulteriori informazioni é possibile scaricare il bando di concorso al seguente link.