Join SEI Tallinn and be part of a diverse and motivated team of 20 experts. The centre currently focuses on three areas: (1) Climate and energy; (2) sustainable development and (3) environmental management, but most projects involve people from different thematic programs.

SEI Tallinn is looking for an intern to support Climate and Energy programme researchers in tasks related to climate data visualization  andcity climatology.

Location: Tallinn, Estonia (the internship can be done at the Tallinn office or remotely)
Internship duration: 3–12 months
Deadline for applications: 12 January 2022
Language: English

Required documents:

  • Letter of application highlighting relevant background, qualifications, interest areas, desired internship period and expected achievement at end of internship (maximum 1 page)
  • Curriculum vitae
  • Optional: List of publications, posters or given talks.

List of potential work tasks:

  • Main topics: support development of projects on climate data visualization (ClimVis Europe) and urban climatology (Green) – see background information below
  • Investigate funding possibilities from diverse set of sources and help prepare funding applications involving multiple partners
  • Support publications and screen literature to create profound overview of certain topics related to meteorology and climatology
  • Conduct data analysis related to meteorological or climate datasets with appropriate technical means
  • Communicate with relevant stakeholders, SEI colleagues and external experts
  • General: support ongoing projects or preparations of ideas within CEA team and support other work-related tasks on demand, mainly related to meteorological-climatological topics

Whom we are looking for

  • Education and/or strong interest and experience: meteorology or climatology or related study field such as geography with devotion, knowledge and/or specialization in meteorology/climatology
  • Study level: internships are generally open to everyone, but priority is given to motivated matriculated university students for whom an internship is either part of their curriculum or a thesis project or b) applicants with work experience looking for new challenges
  • Technical skills: programming skills strongly beneficial to analyse larger datasets
  • Fluency in spoken and written English
  • Optional: language skills in Estonian or another Baltic language, to conduct user-related work tasks in a local language
  • Optional: skills in web design and data visualization

Funding

SEI Tallinn only offers unpaid internships. Internship candidates are expected to be fully funded and insured by external sources for the full duration of the internship. SEI Tallinn does not provide housing and does not assist in finding accommodation.

Background on ClimVis

Climatic changes in average and extreme weather conditions are increasingly manifesting worldwide and projected to further exacerbate in coming decades, impacting patterns of temperature, precipitation and other climate elements, as well as occurrences of extreme events like heat and cold waves, floods and droughts. The named developments and events strongly influence almost all socio-economic and environmental sectors and concern a wide range of interest groups. Timely climate information at various spatial scales, specifically the local level, is crucial to manage and optimize adaptation and mitigation measures and to decrease socio-economic and ecological vulnerability to future climate change risks.

SEI Tallinn is preparing a project on creating a pan-European climate visualization tool, linking weather (current observations and weather forecasts) with climate (past observations and model projections). The tool aims to provide better access to past, present and future climate Information, which are needed for a large variety of non-expert users. We plan for an intuitively accessible, interactive tool providing transient, comprehensible, meaningful and eye-catching visualisations on climatic developments, reliable and up to date content, and regionally (locally) relevant information in an accessible language. A related pilot project (ClimVis Europe) will soon be finished while we start to prepare project consortium and content for a larger-scale (tool-building) project.

Background on Urban Climatology

Climate change hits cities harder than rural areas due to additional warming by surface sealing, lack of ventilation, anthropogenic heat and generally less reflection of incoming short-wave radiation. Furthermore, climate change increases the chance of urban flash floods due to more short-term high-intensity convective precipitation events characterized by large spatial differences within city boundaries. Both aspects are most problematic in the summer. Unfortunately, there is no specific local weather and climate information available in most cities besides point measurements by official weather stations located outside of the areas people usually live. Our goal is to establish smart real-time city-wide climate monitoring systems to assess the large variability of temperature, relative humidity and precipitation. We want to create a reliable information basis for citizens, decision makers and city planners to support urban climate assessments, risk management, city planning, adaptation and an increase in resilience.

Within the next months, SEI Tallinn will buy about 25 sensors to test an urban climate concept in Tallinn in the frame of the B.Green project. The proposed measurements will provide unprecedented insights into local climate characteristics in Estonia and may feed into a range of future applications useful for decision-making activities like those outlined above. Additionally, they will also provide prospects for rain radar calibration, highly localized weather forecasts and even future projections of heat stress and vulnerability. The sensor network will continue to operate after the project is finishe (end of 2022) and collected data will be utilized to initiate future projects with stakeholders from city administrations.

About SEI

Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is an independent international research institute founded in 1989. Its mission is to support decision-making and induce change towards sustainable development around the world by providing integrative knowledge that bridges science and policy in the field of environment and development. SEI was ranked as the world’s top think tank on environmental policy issues in the 2020 Global Go To Think Tanks Index compiled by the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program.

SEI has around 300 employees working at research centres in seven countries around the world. SEI’s headquarters are located in Stockholm, Sweden. Additional SEI research centres are located in Colombia (SEI Latin America), Estonia (SEI Tallinn), Kenya (SEI Africa), Thailand (SEI Asia), the UK (SEI Oxford and SEI York) and US (SEI US).


Contact person

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