NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO; formerly OWAQ, the Office of Weather and Air Quality) is soliciting proposals for weather, atmospheric composition, and earth system modeling and observations research reflecting multiple science objectives spanning time scales from hours to seasons, and from weather and water observations and earth system modeling to fire weather and social, behavioral, and economic science. There will be six grant competitions from this notification valued at approximately $16,500,000 per year as follows: 1) Fire Weather & Atmospheric Composition (FWAC), 2) Climate Testbed (CTB), 3) Weather Testbeds, 4) Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI), 5) Subseasonal-toSeasonal (S2S) , and 6) Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment in the United States (VORTEX-USA).
In alignment with the Weather Forecasting and Innovation Act of 2017 (Public Law 115-25), the funded projects should improve the weather community’s understanding and ultimately its services of weather and water forecasting through engagement with the external scientific community on key science gaps of mutual interest. Through this funding opportunity, NOAA will support new weather, water, climate, earth system, and air quality observing and forecasting applications, including improved analysis techniques, better statistical or dynamic forecast models and techniques, and communication of that information to better inform the public. Forecast model improvements must focus on developing the Unified Forecast System (UFS), with an aim towards addressing forecaster priorities. These priorities were articulated in a recent series of workshops, and the top priorities are listed at https://www.weather.gov/media/sti/Final%20Consolidated%20Forecasters%20r... %202021.pdf.
Deadlines:
Applicants are responsible for ensuring that they are eligible for the competition for which they are applying. If any applicants requesting funding are ineligible, the application(s) will be rejected without review.
Eligible applicants are U.S. institutions of higher education; Cooperative Institutes; U.S.- based commercial organizations; state, local and Indian tribal governments in the U.S.; and U.S. non-profit organizations. No foreign (based outside of the U.S.) applicants may request funding. Federal employees and contractors proposing to perform work directly for NOAA may serve as co-Principal Investigators (co-PIs) or co-Investigators (co-Is) but are ineligible for their salary costs and are required to partner with one or more eligible non-federal institution(s) who would submit the application for the competition through Grants.gov per instructions in Section IV.G “Other Submission Requirements”. Restrictions on requesting federal employee salary and other costs are described in Section IV.F “Funding Restrictions”. Eligibility also depends on the statutory authority that permits NOAA to fund the proposed activity.
