Post-doctoral position (M/F) to study the benefits and drawbacks of AGRI-PV on the nexus food-water-energy.

About this position

The goal of the person hired is to integrate a module for photovoltaic agriculture within a grid into the RegIPSL regional climate model, which couples the ORCHIDEE land surface model with the WRF mesoscale atmospheric model. The goal is to model the impact of PV panels on flow, radiation, and thermodynamics above and below the panels—that is, in a two-layer model—with the ultimate objective of analyzing the water-energy-food nexus at the regional scale under current and future climate conditions. Particular attention will be given to modeling the interactions between the panels and surface flows, depending on atmospheric conditions and the height and orientation of the panels.

Once the coupling is established, the goal will be to produce climate simulations at kilometer resolution over a domain covering a variety of climates (semi-arid to temperate) to better estimate the feedbacks between AGRI-PV systems and the regional climate and thus analyze the impact of adding photovoltaic panels to agricultural land according to various criteria, including primary production, energy production, and water use.

The IPSL coupled regional model couples the WRF atmospheric model with the ORCHIDEE continental surface model, which simulates the surface and subsurface water cycle, the carbon cycle, and plant dynamics for several types of crops. RegIPSL can be run at very high resolutions (~3 km), allowing for accurate representation of surface heterogeneities and improved modeling of convective processes in summer (Ban et al., 2021; Shahi et al., 2022). The impact of changes in visible and infrared radiation, precipitation fluxes reaching the ground, runoff, and turbulent fluxes above areas covered with photovoltaic panels on boundary layer dynamics and structure will be assessed at local and regional scales using simulations run with RegIPSL in explicit convection mode covering several years, as well as the sub-grid-scale parameterization for photovoltaic agriculture to be developed.

The parameterization will be developed based on work already conducted in ORCHIDEE at IPSL and using a two-layer model integrated into ISBA at INRAE/ ISPA, as well as observations from the SIRTA site, where measurements of turbulence and meteorological variables are taken on a reference platform and on a platform equipped with photovoltaic panels beneath which alfalfa and wheat have been planted. Observations obtained at another measurement site near Bordeaux will also be used.

The successful candidate will work between the LMD-IPSL (Palaiseau) and the LATMOS-IPSL (Guyancourt), in close collaboration with INRAE/ISPA in Bordeaux. The successful candidate will have the following responsibilities, to be carried out in collaboration with the other scientists involved in the project:

• analyze SIRTA observations collected over the past 15 months to estimate the impact of photovoltaic panels on local turbulent processes. Facilities at the Salaunes site, near Bordeaux, may also be used
• refine the two-layer model developed at INRAE/ISPA so that it better accounts for interactions between panels and airflow, as well as between panels and radiation, when atmospheric conditions and the height/orientation of the panels are varied.
• integrate the model into WRF-ORCHIDEE
• Present this development in a publication and at AGRIPV group meetings, and, if possible, at an international conference.
• Conduct a simulation using the RegIPSL model on a study area covering France (to be discussed) with and without this new module
• Participate in the analysis of the two simulations, focusing on the changes observed in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, primary production, and energy production. The indicators developed in the project's other WPs will be analyzed.