Deadline: 18-Sep-2024
The Climate Program Office (CPO) is inviting applications for the Understanding and Assessing drought in a Changing Climate Competition.
Objectives
- The Climate Program Office (CPO) supports this vision as part of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). A CPO core function is to support extramural research through a competitive grants process. CPO’s programs span foundational, cross-disciplinary climate sciences, assessments, capacity building, tool development, and education. CPO collaborates closely with partners within NOAA and with the broader academic, Federal, Tribal nations, international bodies, and private sector community.
- CPO works in close partnership with the OAR laboratories and programs to complement and support their in house research. CPO also works with other parts of NOAA to support their mission areas in weather, oceans, fisheries, and service delivery. CPO further builds networks, coalitions, and collaborations, converges around the best ideas, and provides support to accelerate emerging innovation across the climate enterprise. Undertaking a range of climate science and services initiatives, CPO helps their Nation and the world address climate-related challenges and pursue solution-focused opportunities.
- CPO’s definition of climate services is comprehensive, encompassing not only the development and dissemination of actionable climate science to inform decision making, but also the partnerships to engage in and understand the social and policy contexts within which climate-relevant decisions are made. CPO fulfills NOAA’s mandated responsibilities under the National Climate Program Act, the Global Change Research Act and its National Climate Assessment, and the National Integrated Drought Information System Act, and similar international endeavors such as the World Climate Research Program.
- For FY2025, the Coping with Drought: Understanding and Assessing Drought in a Changing Climate competition will be focused on improving drought indicator performance to account for non-stationarity with the goal of more accurate drought assessments that support communities in preparing for, mitigating, and responding to drought. Research has shown drought indicators are sensitive to climate change and non stationarity. More specifically, drought indices and models, which represent physical drought indicators, are very sensitive to the reference period chosen to assess current conditions. When applying drought indicators and assessing drought and drought impacts, there needs to be an acknowledgement of, and systematic accounting for, regional to sub-regional differences in non-stationarity.
- Climate change might be affecting current drought indices and indicators in similar or different ways. When combining the complications of regional differences and climate change, consider regions where aridification or humidification may be complicating the ability of drought indices to differentiate drought from long-term change. Thus, improved drought indicator performance requires better scientific understanding of spatial-temporal sensitivities. This topic area also addresses challenges that impact drought indicator performance, including: changes in variability and extreme events; changes in snowpack and melt dynamics; and changes in processes like evapotranspiration. There is also an opportunity to move towards more sophisticated approaches to incorporate non-stationarity statistics in drought indices and assessments. This could include exploring new approaches or modifying existing ones, validating these approaches, and the dissemination to drought practitioners with accompanying documentation for application to drought assessment.
Program Priorities
- The overarching goals of NIDIS are to 1) provide effective drought early warning for the nation; 2) conduct research and monitoring activities to better understand length, severity, and impacts of drought and the role of extreme weather events and climate variability in drought, 3) collect, integrate, and communicate information on key indicators and impacts of drought to inform timely drought assessments, 4) support improvements in seasonal, sub seasonal, and low flow water prediction; and 5) provide timely data, information, and products that reflect watershed differences in drought conditions.
Funding Information
- In FY25, approximately $2 million will be available for the first year of funding for approximately 8 new awards pending budget appropriations. It is anticipated that most awards will be at a funding level between $50,000 and $250,000 per year over 2 years for a total of $500,000.
- Projects are expected to last 2 years.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible applicants are institutions of higher education, other nonprofits, commercial organizations, international organizations, and state, local and federally recognized tribal governments.
- Federal agencies or institutions are not eligible to receive Federal assistance under this notice.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.