Space Weather Scientist

Contract Type: Full Time. Duration: Fixed Term Appointment - 3 Years and 10 Months. Salary: £41,344 to £45,479 per annum. Closing Date: Sunday, December 7, 2025.

Benefits: We offer generous benefits.

British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is looking for an exceptional Space Weather Scientist to join our Space Weather and Atmosphere team. BAS delivers and enables world‑leading interdisciplinary research in the Polar Regions. We employ experts from many different professions to carry out our science, keep the lights on, feed the research and support teams and keep everyone safe.

Working at BAS is rewarding. Our skilled science, operational and support staff based in Cambridge, Antarctica and the Arctic work together to deliver research that uses the Polar Regions to advance our understanding of Earth as a sustainable planet. Through our extensive logistic capability and know‑how BAS facilitates access for the British and international science community to the UK polar research operation. Numerous national and international collaborations, combined with excellent infrastructure, help sustain a world‑leading position for the UK in Antarctic affairs. British Antarctic Survey is a component of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (www.ukri.org).

• 
  
• 30 days annual leave plus bank holidays and 2.5 privilege days
  
• Excellent civil service pension with 26% or more employer contribution, depending on your band
  
• 24 hours/365 days access to employee assistance programme (EAP – support with physical, mental, social, health and financial issues)
  
• Flexible and family‑friendly working opportunities
  
• Cycle to work scheme
  
• Access to discounted shopping on a range of retail, leisure and lifestyle categories and much more
  

You’ll be joining our Space Weather and Atmosphere Team to work on understanding how high frequency radar data can be used to track small‑scale Joule heating effects globally. The overall goal of the team is to understand how solar variations affect the Earth’s space radiation environment, upper atmosphere and climate in the Polar Regions.

You’ll help us deliver a NERC‑funded project to quantify the ionospheric Joule heating missed in calculations from large‑scale observations. The heating of the neutral atmosphere impacts atmospheric expansion, which in turn increases the drag on orbiting satellites, affecting satellite lifetimes and collision warning calculations. The aim of this project is to determine where, when and why smaller‑scale heating occurs, thereby establishing its overall importance to the upper atmosphere heating budget and turning this new understanding into an open‑source tool that can be applied to all SuperDARN radar data, past, present and future.

Within the role, there will be an opportunity to develop your understanding of ionospheric and magnetospheric physics and the wide range of observation techniques used in this project and more broadly at BAS. You will also develop capability in public software creation and version control in Python and Git. Broad learning and development opportunities are available within BAS and UKRI.

The team is working on:

• 
  
• A new approach to modelling the Earth’s radiation environment
  
• Studying the drivers and impacts of ionospheric variability
  
• Providing radiation belt forecasts for the UK Met Office
  
• Investigating the effects of coupled wave power and plasma properties on radiation belt dynamics
  
• Understanding the radiation belts at Jupiter and Saturn
  

• 
  
• Work as part of the MAHSSIV project team to analyse data from multiple ground‑based instruments, aiming to link SuperDARN spectral width data from historical datasets to fine‑scale plasma motion through case studies and appropriate statistics.
  
• Create an open‑source Python tool for the international community to track small‑scale Joule heating contributions using the global SuperDARN radar network.
  

• 
  
• A PhD or equivalent experience in physics, maths or an associated discipline.
  
• Experience of scientific data analysis.
  
• Demonstrated enthusiasm for science and data analysis.
  

If we’ve just described you, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now at bas.ac.uk/vacancies.

At BAS we believe everyone plays a vital role, is unique and valued, therefore we embrace diversity as well as equality of opportunity and are committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming working environment where everyone’s unique perspectives are valued. Different perspectives and collaborative working help us achieve our best work and bring together a high‑performing team that makes positive changes in the business. That’s the power of every individual. Our cultural values are built on mutual respect, inclusion, commitment and excellence.

If you are looking for an opportunity to work with world‑class and amazing people in one of the most unique places in the world, British Antarctic Survey could be for you.

If you require the job information in an alternative format (i.e. email, audio or video), or would like any further information or support, please do not hesitate to get in touch at or alternatively you can call us on .