PhD Studentship: Arctic Dust from Above and Below: Estimating the Unseen Contributions of Northern High Latitude Dust Sources

Overview:

Loughborough University is a top-ten rated university in England for research intensity (REF 2014) and an outstanding 66% of the work of Loughborough’s academic staff who were eligible to be submitted to the REF was judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’, compared to a national average figure of 43%.

In choosing Loughborough for your research, you’ll work alongside academics who are leaders in their field. You will benefit from comprehensive support and guidance from our Doctoral College, including tailored careers advice, to help you succeed in your research and future career.

The School of Social Sciences and Humanities is composed of five divisions: Communication and Media; Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy; English; Geography and Environment; and International Relations, Politics and History. It is a partner in the Central England NERC Training Alliance (CENTA) for doctoral training and the Midlands Graduate School ESRC Doctoral training Partnership.

The School is committed to undertaking initiatives which support under-represented groups to pursue educational and research opportunities across our disciplines. Analysis has shown that only small numbers of UK racialised minority students are undertaking post graduate research degrees within the School. To take steps to address this structural inequality, School-funded studentships have been ring-fenced for UK applicants who identify as being from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background as part of our wider work to support underrepresented groups within our disciplines.

Project details:

The global distribution and seasonality of dust emissions are reasonably well constrained, but certain data sources cause dust emissions to be under-estimated and this under-estimation may be particularly biased towards particular types of dust events. For example, field measurements of dust emissions are valuable for quantifying at-a-point characteristics of dust, including dust mass, vertical uplift and dust attributes such as size and nutrient content. Scaling up field measurements of dust emissions to determine their regional or global impact is challenging and in some cases the solution to that is satellite remote sensing. However due to their size, timing or dispersal characteristics, some regionally and/or cumulatively significant dust events can go undetected by satellite imagery. This is a particular challenge that needs exploring for high latitude dust source regions (≥50°N and ≥40°S), most notably the Arctic.

This project will integrate ground-based and satellite datasets to determine how different data sources represent Arctic dust events, with the goal to understand the data limitations and hence how under- or over-estimation of dust may be accounted for. Understanding the biases and errors associated with these different data sources will enable the establishment of criteria for fine-tuning estimates of total regional dust loading in high latitude areas.

Project code: CENTA23-LU9

Funding

The studentship is funded for 3.5 years starting from October 2023 and provides a tax-free stipend of £17,668 per annum (in 2022/23) for the duration of the studentship plus tuition fees at the UK rate (£4,596 in 2022/23) and a Research Training Support Grant (RTSG) of £8,000. Further guidance about eligibility is available at UKRI Terms and Conditions. International students (including EU) are eligible to apply and there will be a fee waiver in place covering the difference between Home and International fees for successful candidates.  Please note that studentships will be awarded on a competitive basis to applicants who have applied to this project. Funding decisions will not be confirmed until after the 20^th February 2023.

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