ESA Graduate Trainee in Earth Observation Ocean Science
Job Requisition ID: 20266
Date Posted: 1 February 2026
Closing Date: 28 February :59 CET/CEST
Publication: External Only
Type of Appointment: ESA Graduate Trainee
Directorate: Earth Observation Programmes
Workplace:
Frascati, IT
Grade Band: F1 - F1
Location
ESRIN, Frascati, Italy
Our team and mission
The Science Section within the Climate Action, Sustainability and Science Department of the Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes is a dynamic R&D team leading EO research and Earth system and climate science activities, in partnership with European and international scientific groups. Visit our web site for an overview of our activities:
More specifically, the Trainee will be part of the Earth System Science Hub, a new science laboratory in ESA working as center for networking and scientific collaboration among world-class researchers in Member States (MS) and worldwide. The Hub brings together young and senior scientists of different disciplines in Earth Observation and Earth system Science to work together sharing different expertise and capabilities and undertaking collaborative research in order to promote a community response to the main science challenges of this decade.
The Graduate Trainee work will also be framed in the context of the newly established ADVANCED MEDITERRANEAN OPEN SCIENCE DATA ANALYSIS LAB (MeDAL). MeDAL has been inaugurated on April 7th in the ESRIN Science Hub through the signature of a Memorandum of Intent between the Director of ESA Earth Observation Programmes Simonetta Cheli, and the Director of the Institute of Marine Science of the National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) of Italy Mario Sprovieri. The main goal of this new initiative is to jointly advance the scientific understanding of the Mediterranean Sea, an area providing numerous vital services to people living along its coasts, but whose health is threatened by an increasing number of pressures including climate change.
You are encouraged to visit the ESA website:
Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship
Studying the 3D ocean circulation is crucial for understanding how the ocean uptakes and transports tracers like heat, CO2, oxygen, nutrients, etc. The exchanges with the atmosphere, and the pathways between the ocean surface and its interior influence the Earth's climate from regional to global scales and also play a key role in structuring the marine life. However, unravelling the specific mechanisms regulating these processes is still challenging in oceanography. This is particularly true for the Mediterranean Sea, where the Rossby deformation radius (setting the typical scales of more energetic flow instabilities) only reaches O(~10km), and investigations based on the analysis of data collected from single platforms or through hydrographic surveys limited in space and time are clearly not adequate to address all processes at play.
The main objective of the ESA Graduate Trainee activity will be to develop, test and validate new methods allowing to reconstruct the dynamical state of the Mediterranean Sea at high spatio-temporal resolution by merging innovative high-resolution data from the altimeter SWOT (Surface Water Ocean Topography) mission together with other satellite altimeters and in-situ measurements. The work falls withing the framework of the on-going ESA 4DMED project whose objectives are to exploit the synergy offered by the increasing EO European satellites together with in-situ observations, advanced physical/biogeochemical/ecological models and novel technologies to develop a data-driven, 4D reconstruction of the Mediterranean Sea physical and biogeochemical state. This information is exploited to further improve our understanding of the complex interactions between physical and biological processes at a broad range of temporal and spatial scales and explore options to