View the grant opportunity NOAA-NWS-NWSPO-2022-2007072
Pre-proposal Letters of Intent (LOIs) are strongly encouraged and must be received by email to nws.sti.modeling.team@noaa.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) on December 6, 2021.
Full application packages for all competitions must be submitted via Grants.gov no later than 5:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) on February 7, 2022. Expected project start date is September 1, 2022.
The Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) is soliciting research proposals to support NOAA’s development of the community-based, coupled, comprehensive earth modeling system, the Unified Forecast System (UFS). The UFS is designed to provide more accurate forecast guidance through operational numerical weather prediction applications. These applications span local and global domains, and predictive time scales from sub-hourly to seasonal. Detailed information regarding UFS can be found on the UFS portal: https://ufscommunity.org/.
There are three competitions from this notification valued at approximately $3,000,000 for the first year of multi-year (2 or 3 year) projects that will advance development of the UFS: 1) Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS); 2) Weeks 3-4/S2S Program; and 3) Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP).
NGGPS Competition: Research proposals to advance the UFS Medium-Range Weather Application will focus on accelerating coupled model development to improve forecast accuracy. This includes coupling among the weather prediction model components (atmosphere, ocean, wave, ice, land and atmospheric composition system), advancing coupled data assimilation and ensemble techniques, developing post-processing forecast tools, and improving probabilistic forecast skill by improving software architecture, computational performance and system engineering. Additional information on NGGPS can be found at: https://www.weather.gov/sti/stimodeling_nggps
Weeks 3-4/S2S Competition: Proposals pertaining to the advancement of the Weeks 3-4/S2S Program will contribute to the development of coupled data assimilation approaches; extending the forecast of the UFS subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) prototypes from 3 weeks to seasonal timescales; process-level diagnostic tools and validation/verification metrics for the coupled system; and addressing challenges in S2S prediction that project onto NOAA’s requirements for Weeks 3-4, monthly and seasonal forecast products (https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov). Additional information can be found at: https://www.weather.gov/sti/stimodeling_nggps_weeks3-4
HFIP Competition: Proposals for the HFIP initiative will support hurricane research and development required to improve operational hurricane forecasts of higher accuracy and greater reliability to meet societal requirements to effectively mitigate loss of life and economic disruption. This includes specific goals to reduce the average errors of hurricane track, intensity and structure forecasts guidance errors by 20% relative to the 2017 baseline within five years and 50% in ten years with a forecast period out to 7 days in the UFS Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS). The specific research, development, and technology-transfer activities necessary to address HFIP’s science and R2O challenges can be found in the HFIP Strategic Plan document (https://hfip.org/sites/default/files/documents/hfip-strategic-plan-20190625-final.pdf) available on the HFIP website (http://www.hfip.org).
The selection of projects will focus on those associated with Readiness Levels (RL) 4 through 7 as described on the Research and Development Transitions website: https://www.noaa.gov/organization/administration/nao-216-105b-policy-on-research-and-development-transitions
Eligible Applicants
Eligible applicants are U.S. institutions of higher education; U.S.-based commercial organizations; state, local and Indian tribal governments in the U.S.; and other U.S. nonprofit organizations.
Proposal Budget
See Section IV.B.2 (e) Full Proposal Budget and Proposed Budget Justification for description of proposal budget. An example summary budget table indicating the total and annual budgets for a 3 year project is shown below.
| Institution | Year 1 budget | Year 2 budget | Year 3 budget | Total |
| Institution 1 | Year 1 budget | Year 2 budget | Year3 budget | Institution 1 Total |
| Institution 2 | Year 1 budget | Year 2 budget | Year 3 budget | Institution 2 Total |
| Institution 3 | Year 1 budget | Year 2 budget | Year 3 budget | Institution 3 Total |
| Total | Year 1 Total | Year 2 Total | Year 3 Total | Total budget |
Funding Restrictions
NOAA will not fund federal employee salary costs for federal government employees. Applicants may budget up to, but not more than 30% of the proposed budget in support of NOAA laboratory or NCEP modeling center collaborators. For a collaboration that includes some funding for federal offices, the actual amount to be awarded through Grants Online would only be the portion of the non-government recipient and would be less than the $300,000 maximum project cost.
For any questions regarding this announcement, please contact NWS OSTI Modeling Program Office via email at nws.sti.modeling.team@noaa.gov
