NOAA’s Weather Program Office Offers Grants for Weather, Water, and Earth System Research Programs

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.

Applicability to Federal Employees and Contractors: Federal employees may serve as co-PIs or co-Investigators (co-Is) but their salary costs are ineligible expenses to be covered by awards from this NOFO. Any NOAA Federal applicant is 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.” Eligibility also depends on the statutory authority that permits NOAA to fund the proposed activity. For the purposes of this funding announcement, contractors for the Federal government have the same eligibility restrictions as Federal employees. Costs incurred by NOAA federal collaborators are eligible for funding through this NOFO only if they fit into one of the categories listed below. Further details are provided in the attached NOFO Information Sheet.

Allowed: NOAA federal collaborator travel is only eligible in critical project-dependent
cases, not including conference or workshop travel.
Allowed: NOAA Federal funding may also cover project-critical equipment, indirect
(overhead) costs for NOAA affiliate institutions, infrastructure, and testbed-
related costs.
NOT Allowed: Any other direct funding for federal institutions, including employee
salaries or other costs not listed as eligible in Section III.A, will not be
considered as part of this funding opportunity.

All funded investigators must assure and verify, if requested, that they will not be allocated for greater than 100% of their annual employment time should their proposal be selected for funding. NOAA will verify this requirement if the proposal is recommended for funding.

NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO) is soliciting proposals for four grant competitions from this notification valued at approximately $13.5 million per year as follows: 1) Innovations for Community Modeling, 2) Observations (Obs), 3) Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES), and 4) Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment in the United States (VORTEX-USA; inclusive of VORTEX-Southeast).

In alignment with the Weather Forecasting and Innovation Act of 2017 (Public Law 115-25), this funding opportunity will allow NOAA to support new weather, water, and earth system 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. In particular, projects are sought that are responsive to the Priorities articulated in the Science Advisory Board’s 2021 Priorities for Weather Research Report (https://sab.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PWR-Report_Final_12-9-21.pdf).

For the purposes of NOAA-funded projects, the maturity of projects is broadly classified using Readiness Levels (RLs), as adopted by NOAA and other federal agencies. The numerical RL scale from 1 to 9 is designed to track project maturity across the progressive spectrum from research to development to demonstration to deployment. Some competitions and science priorities in this announcement may target research at a specific maturity level and restrict proposals to specific RL ranges. Additional information can be found in the Program Objectives (Section I.A) and Priorities (Section I.B), and definitions of RLs can be found in the NOFO Information Sheet accompanying this announcement.

NOAA, OAR, and WPO encourage applicants and awardees to write their proposals and perform their work in a manner consistent with NOAA’s core values, including those on diversity, inclusion, accessibility, civil rights, and scientific integrity. Promoting diversity and inclusion improves creativity, productivity, and the vitality of the weather and water research community in which WPO engages.