NOAA-OAR-WPO-2023-2007516 NOFO Report.pdf

FY2023 Weather Program Office Research Programs

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Funding Opportunity Description 4

A. Program Objective 4 B. Program Priorities 11 C. Program Authority 18

II. Award Information 18 A. Funding Availability 18 B. Project/Award Period 19 C. Type of Funding Instrument 20

III. Eligibility Information 21 A. Eligible Applicants 21 B. Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement 22 C. Other Criteria that Affect Eligibility 22

IV. Application and Submission Information 22 A. Address to Request Application Package 22 B. Content and Form of Application 22 C. Unique Entity Identifier and System for Award Management (SAM) 32 D. Submission Dates and Times 32 E. Intergovernmental Review 33 F. Funding Restrictions 34 G. Other Submission Requirements 34

V. Application Review Information 35 A. Evaluation Criteria 35 B. Review and Selection Process 37 C. Selection Factors 38 D. Anticipated Announcement and Award Dates 39

VI. Award Administration Information 39 A. Award Notices 39 B. Administrative and National Policy Requirements 39 C. Reporting 43

VII. Agency Contacts 44 VIII. Other Information 45

Notice of Federal Funding Page 1 of 45

NOTICE OF FUNDING OPPORTUNITY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Federal Agency Name(s): Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce

Funding Opportunity Title: FY2023 Weather Program Office Research Programs

Announcement Type: Initial

Funding Opportunity Number: NOAA-OAR-WPO-2023-2007516

Federal Assistance Listings Number: 11.459, Weather and Air Quality Research

Dates: For each of the four competitions within this Fiscal Year 2023 funding opportunity, full applications must be received by 5:00 pm Eastern Time (ET) on November 17, 2022.

Applications received after this deadline will not be considered. Pre-proposal Letters of Intent (LOIs) are strongly encouraged for potential applicants to all competitions and must be received by 5:00 pm ET on September 15, 2022, in order to receive a pre-proposal review. Award decisions are expected in May 2023. Financial awards for all competitions will be a maximum of two to three years in length, depending on the competition, and are recommended to begin in August or September 2023, as described in Section II.B “Project/Award Period.”

Funding Opportunity Description: 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

Notice of Federal Funding Page 2 of 45 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.

Notice of Federal Funding Page 3 of 45

FULL ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT

I. Funding Opportunity Description

A. Program Objective

The following four competitions are accepting proposals for funding as part of this Notice of Funding Opportunity.

1. Innovations for Community Modeling

The U.S. faces a spectrum of high-impact environmental hazards that can disrupt people's lives and the nation's economy. To meet these challenges, NOAA has created the Unified Forecast System (UFS) to develop the best environmental information using large observational datasets, high-performance computing (HPC), and advanced Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems. The UFS is being developed in collaboration with the larger public-private weather, water, and climate research and academic enterprise, following a unified modeling system approach based on open-source, open-development principles.

The WPO Innovations for Community Modeling Competition funds an energized and committed community that includes researchers from the full weather enterprise - academia, government, and industry - partnering with NOAA to improve scientific understanding and forecasting through innovation. We seek high-risk/high-reward projects accelerating scientific research and modeling contributions through continuous and sustained community engagement. Proposals must address the ultimate goal of improving forecast skill, in close alignment with NOAA’s vision and mission towards advancing the UFS to become the world's most accurate and reliable operational modeling system in the world. Successful proposals must articulate how their research is addressing the forecast system deficiencies derived from the 2021-22 NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Forecasters Workshops (https://www.weather.gov/media/sti/Final%20Consolidated%20Forecasters%20requests%20 April%202021.pdf), priorities set out in NOAA’s Science Advisory Board’s Priorities for Weather Research (https://sab.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PWR- Report_Final_12-9-21.pdf), and community priorities identified in the UFS Strategic Plan (https://vlab.noaa.gov/documents/12370130/12437941/20210406_UFS_Strategic_Plan_202 1-2025_v1.0.pdf).

By adding a focus on innovative research to the objectives and priorities from other competitions in this notice of funding opportunity, WPO seeks to strengthen an open

Notice of Federal Funding Page 4 of 45 partnership between NOAA and the external community, enabling the co-development of high-quality modeling systems reflecting cutting-edge science. Approaches that benefit portability across HPC resources that are easier to transition across the research-to-operations funnel are encouraged. Although focusing on high-risk/high-reward projects at the lower readiness level, this competition will also accept innovative proposals with potential for operational transition at higher readiness levels.

To qualify as innovative, the proposals must focus on substantially new approaches and not on incremental changes. Model developments should focus on UFS systems that are expected to be implemented into operations in 5 years or later, i.e. “next plus one” generations of the UFS. Projects that propose introduction of new systems into the UFS must make a compelling case for why and how this new approach will advance forecast skill and efficiency as well as enhance community engagement. Project awards will include an optimal balance of smaller high-risk, low-cost proof-of-concept ideas as well as larger collaborative proposals. At the end of the period of performance, successful and promising innovation projects with higher potential for transition to NOAA operations will be further evaluated by a panel of experts and selected for further funding by the JTTI and/or EPIC program dependent upon available federal budget appropriations.

The research themes which will receive particular emphasis in this competition shall fall within priorities associated with three program areas, Numerical Weather Prediction Capabilities, Western States Hydrology, and Fire Weather Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Forecasting.

Numerical Weather Prediction Capabilities

NOAA is embracing a fundamental change in the development and advancements of the UFS to become a fully-coupled Earth prediction system addressing all scales from the mesoscale short range to the seasonal-to-subseasonal predictions across the linked weather-water-climate domain. The effort requires a collaborative development approach across NOAA in partnership with external research communities to create the best operational earth-system model forecast capabilities to address a wide range of extreme weather, water, and climate events.

The UFS is a community based, coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system that can be configured to provide predictive information for weather, ocean, air quality, and coastal systems spanning time scales from a few hours to two years. Further innovation will improve high-resolution, coupled forecasts and extend forecast information for severe weather, including tropical storms, heavy precipitation, extreme temperatures, to Earth system

Notice of Federal Funding Page 5 of 45 processes that drive predictability of weather systems at subseasonal-to-seasonal timescales.

Envisaging high-risk/high-reward opportunities that may accelerate the development of such capabilities in the UFS, projects funded by this program area will develop next-plus-1-generation capabilities, such as atmospheric physics or dynamics, coupled data assimilation, coupling the atmosphere to the ocean, ice and/or land systems, for example.

Proposals may include an optional whitepaper-style section on improving computational performance and/or working with alternative next-generation (next-gen) HPC systems, as it relates to the UFS scientific component of the project. The computational whitepaper section should include an estimation of required resources, including computing or software engineering. Proposals selected for the science component will be subsequently considered for the computational performance component in a follow-on process. Examples include:

improve computational performance of the UFS code and coupling infrastructure, flexible workflow, parallel performance, and multiplatform capabilities. Innovative approaches such as code refactoring for HPC efficiency and next-gen computer performance, updating code language, and developing and using cloud-computing infrastructure for UFS applications, and proposals addressing needs towards converging community modeling systems in the long term are also strongly encouraged.

Western States Hydrology

NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) seeks to support the resiliency of the nation’s economy, infrastructure, and security over the subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) time frame (two weeks to two years out) by improving understanding and prediction of hydrological changes in the US western states. The U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook currently indicates a severe drought in the US western states; reservoirs that maintain the snowmelt water also show historic record low levels. Even with the low snowfall, a rapid increase in the spring air temperature and regional torrential precipitation cause abrupt floods. Through WPO, OAR will address a spectrum of precipitation and hydrology issues on the S2S time frame at the early stages of research readiness.

The S2S temporal range covers a wide range of phenomena with significant global and regional impacts on economies and human safety. The portfolio will support NOAA’s community-based Unified Forecast System (UFS) coupled prototype and its components most crucial for improving western-US hydrologic forecasts, which should benefit the nation's agricultural production and industrial adaptations in this changing weather and climate.

Successful projects must propose innovative improvements to the predictive capability of

Notice of Federal Funding Page 6 of 45 precipitation or drought or their Earth system precursors within the NOAA UFS global coupled modeling suite via the two topics included in this NOFO priorities section. While the topic must use the global UFS, it should aim for predictive skill at basin scales.

Proposals must demonstrate a focused goal of improving hydrological prediction such as drought and flood, particularly through precipitation improvement, with secondary emphasis on global land hydrology in the UFS, including infiltration of rainfall and snowmelt, and routing of the surface and subsurface water flows. Projects to improve global land hydrology must also include coupling and feedback to the global system.

Fire Weather Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Forecasting

Projects in this program area shall aim to improve the ability to provide timely and accurate guidance to safeguard lives and property and manage downstream air quality impacts associated with the marked increase in the number of acres burned by hazardous wildfire and in the wildfire-urban interface region. The number of wildfires and the acres burned is projected to increase as the climate warms, with profound changes to certain ecosystems.

Wildfires threaten forest and grasslands, housing and communities, crops, aquatic and soil ecosystems, and air quality near and far from the fires. They ultimately cost the Nation billions of dollars a year when accounting for the damage to buildings and communities and the impacts on human health associated with smoke and poor air quality.

Proposals are encouraged to address uncertainty, data assimilation, and core processes in the UFS or its components needed to forecast S2S fire activity or fire conditions in the United States. Model development projects must focus primarily on the UFS addressing fire-weather modeling for subseasonal-to-seasonal timescales. Fire-weather forecast product development may work with multi-model ensemble systems, but must include the UFS as one member.

Additional Information

Project selections will balance among themes listed below and will be highly dependent upon finalized federal budget appropriations. LOIs and proposals are expected to clearly specify the priorities to be addressed. Collaboration with NOAA Laboratories and Centers is encouraged but not required. Engagement with the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) program and contract is strongly encouraged, aiming to develop high-quality, well-tested, well-documented software using continuous integration and continuous delivery methods. EPIC projects may also perform developments in-cloud HPC and may budget for cloud time in the proposals (see the HPC guidance section below).

Notice of Federal Funding Page 7 of 45

For additional information on the JTTI, EPIC, S2S, and Fire Weather and Atmospheric Composition Programs and more details about this competition, please review the supplemental information sheets in the grant package associated with this announcement at https://www.grants.gov. See also the EPIC website (https://epic.noaa.gov) for further information on the EPIC program and contract and how to engage.

2. Observations

The aim of this competition is to develop, demonstrate, and/or analyze innovative sensor and observing technologies and strategies that have high potential for advancing an observation systems portfolio that is mission-effective, integrated, adaptable, and affordable. Proposed research should demonstrate relevance and support to the weather enterprise.

Observations from the surface through the troposphere serve as critical inputs for the analysis and forecasts of the operational weather enterprise for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy. Given that the relative scarcity of high resolution surface and planetary boundary layer/tropospheric observations impedes progress in skillful predictions of high-impact and disruptive weather, proposals should focus on technologies with the potential to improve the accuracy, reliability, spatial coverage, cost effectiveness, deployability, safety, and sustainability of observations for eventual use by the operational weather enterprise including NOAA, the National Mesonet Program, the private sector, and other government sectors.

Realizing that surface through boundary layer and tropospheric weather-related observations are unevenly distributed in space, time and purpose, proposals of particular interest should leverage in-situ surface, profiling, balloon-borne, radar, airborne, and/or UxS based observing technologies for use in sampling and/or sensing adverse weather phenomena beyond just severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, such as extreme precipitation, extreme temperatures, floods, tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers, transitional ice precipitation, and fire weather, and that are cost-effective, widely available, and/or affordably available for purchase, independent of investment beyond the grant award period. Satellite-sensors are not included in this scope except to calibrate, validate, or integrate in-situ observations as a secondary objective.

The strongest proposals should (1) include substantial collaboration with one or more operational weather stakeholder(s) with the potential to benefit from the work and deliver sample data to the stakeholders for evaluation during the practical portion of the award period, (2) clearly document linkage to operational weather needs and demonstrate or

Notice of Federal Funding Page 8 of 45 allocate effort to understand how new observations may be used in the operational weather enterprise, e.g. NOAA National Weather Service, National MesoNet Program, State Climatologist Programs, and tailor aspects of the observation collection and instrument design accordingly, and (3) demonstrate potential to transition to operations, applications, commercialization, or a final product, and, if applicable (e.g., the path to operations is not commercialization), explain how NOAA can sustain the observational capabilities and outcomes of the proposed work in an operational capacity. Additional information and examples regarding operational relevance and collaboration are listed in the FY23 Observations competition information sheet.

Projects appropriate for this competition range from Readiness Level (RL) 5 to RL 7 and have potential to transition to operations, application, commercialization, or final product at either NOAA or the weather enterprise within the next 3 to 6 years. The NOAA Readiness Levels are defined in the FY23 WPO General Information Sheet.

For additional information on this WPO Observations Program funding opportunity, including complete, detailed descriptions for each priority, please review the FY23 Observations Program information sheet for the Observations competition in the grant package associated with this announcement at https://www.grants.gov.

3. Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES)

Recent societal impacts from hurricanes, floods, snow storms, tornadoes, and wildfires demonstrates that although there have been considerable advances in weather prediction and forecasting, there is a continual need to understand the intersection of human behavior and meteorology. A variety of social, behavioral, and environmental factors “affect how we prepare for, observe, predict, respond to, and are impacted by weather hazards” (NASEM, 2018. doi:10.17226/24865). Thus, social, behavioral, and economic science (SBES) research plays a critical role in connecting NOAA's weather forecast information and improvements to the public’s growing forecast needs. The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 further recognizes the importance of SBES science integration within the larger weather enterprise by emphasizing the need to improve our understanding of how people (e.g., NWS stakeholders, forecasters, the public) receive, interpret, and respond to warnings and forecasts of weather events that endanger life and property, as well as how to best communicate weather events to various stakeholders. And, most recently, the NOAA Science Advisory Board published a report titled Priorities in Weather Research with a recommendation to “Increase investments in social and human behavioral data collection and sciences to better understand how weather products are used and to support co-

Notice of Federal Funding Page 9 of 45 development of improved products” (p.6 https://sab.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PWR-Report_Final_12-9-21.pdf).

The Weather Program Office (WPO) Social Science Program (SSP) is dedicated to finding, funding, and fostering collaborative SBES weather research and helps translate findings into potential NOAA applications. Through this funding announcement, WPO SSP solicits SBES research proposals that benefit the overall weather community. The WPO SSP seeks to involve SBES researchers and social science led, interdisciplinary teams to integrate SBES into meteorological research, forecasting, information displays, communication of uncertainty, and understanding of individual and community vulnerabilities to weather.

These disciplines include (but are not limited to) anthropology, communication, economics, geography, political science, psychology, and sociology. Specifically, this funding call supports interdisciplinary work, applied research, and more broadly, social science research that will advance theoretical findings into applications for the operational forecast community.

Projects appropriate for this competition range from Readiness Level (RL) 2 to RL 8 and have potential to transition to operations at either NOAA or the weather and water enterprise within the next 3 to 7 years. Social science projects aimed at theory and methodological development with respect to a particular application area fall between RL2–3. Projects advancing existing products or enhancing a well-established methodology likely fall between RL4–8. NOAA Readiness Levels are defined in the WPO FY23 information sheet.

All projects that involve the use of human test subjects must clearly state so in their application (see Section IV.B.3). Any projects involving NWS Federal employees in the development or distribution of methods (i.e., survey advertisement) may require OMB/PRA approval with the NWS (see WPO FY23 information sheet) and should account for this in their project timeline. If the project includes using secondary data sources and/or analysis of previously collected data, please state so clearly in the proposal.

For additional program information on this competition, please review the supplemental Information Sheet for the Social Science competition in the grant package associated with this announcement at https://www.grants.gov.

4. VORTEX-USA

VORTEX-Southeast (VORTEX-SE) is a Congressionally authorized research program that has been ongoing since 2015. When examining measures of the threat posed by tornadoes to life and property, the southeastern U.S. has six of the eight most vulnerable states. Some of

Notice of Federal Funding Page 10 of 45 the vulnerability is due to issues such as a relatively large proportion of the population residing in mobile homes, which are known to be unsafe even in moderately strong tornadoes. Another principal risk in the Southeast is that many tornadoes occur during nighttime hours, associated with over half the deaths and injuries. Further, tornado casualties are disproportionately in the late fall and winter months, which is a time of year not typically associated with tornadoes according to conventional understanding or public perception; and they often occur under conditions of marginal thermodynamic instability and very strong vertical wind shear (high shear/low CAPE or HSLC). Hence, there are many issues in the continuum spanning meteorological understanding to public awareness and perception that must be addressed in order to reduce the high tornado vulnerability in the Southeast.

The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (Public Law 115-25) authorized the implementation of a tornado warning improvement and extension program, codified in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, as VORTEX-USA. VORTEX-USA continues the work of the VORTEX-SE program and also expands it by seeking to increase our knowledge of meteorological processes and societal impacts of tornadoes nationwide, while gaining improved understanding of unique regional challenges that heighten tornado vulnerability. VORTEX-USA will integrate research findings into NOAA’s Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) framework to ensure that this research effort improves NOAA’s operational forecast and warning capacity and improves societal response to tornado threats and impacts.

For additional program information on VORTEX-USA and this competition, please review the supplemental Information Sheet for the VORTEX-USA competition in the grant package associated with this announcement at https://www.grants.gov.

B. Program Priorities

NOAA’s highest priorities for each of the four separate competitions funded through this announcement are identified below. Applicants for a given competition below should clearly indicate and address in their proposal one or more of the associated priorities for that specific competition. Proposals not directly associated with one or more of these priorities are discouraged.

1. Innovations in Community Modeling

WPO invites proposals that address one or more of the topics below (including at least one subtopic) within priorities associated with three competition program areas - Numerical Weather Prediction Capabilities, Western States Hydrology, and Fire Weather Subseasonal-

Notice of Federal Funding Page 11 of 45 to-Seasonal Forecasting; the LOI’s and proposals must specify the primary topics to be addressed.

Program Area I: Numerical Weather Prediction Capabilities

JEIC-1: Develop next-plus-1-generation atmospheric physics, dynamical core, and/or their interfaces for the UFS and its applications.

JEIC-2: Develop next-plus1-generation component models or systems for the UFS that are modular/interoperable, computationally efficient, and/or scale aware on next-gen computing platforms. Component improvements must demonstrably improve the skill and efficiency of the coupled system and forecast system.

JEIC-3: Develop faster and more efficient initialization of coupled model forecasts through improved and innovative use of observations and advances in coupled data assimilation algorithms for the UFS.

JEIC-4: Develop innovative approaches to establish high-resolution global ensembles using UFS applications.

JEIC-5: Develop innovative post-processing capabilities of the UFS. Improve the quantification of model uncertainty in ensemble forecasts.

Program Area II: Western States Hydrology

S2SIC-1: Community-based approaches to improve Earth system models via development and evaluation of individual model components and coupling within the community-based UFS S2S prototypes crucial for improved prediction of western states hydrometeorology.

Development and evaluation may focus on processes occurring within one component of the UFS Earth system, but non-atmospheric components must include coupling and feedback to the atmosphere.

S2SIC-2: Improved coupled data assimilation (DA) techniques leveraging observations in one UFS Earth system component (e.g. cryosphere, ocean, waves, land surface, and atmospheric composition) to improve another, and the incorporation of new observation types critical for improved predictions on the S2S time scale while being consistent with coupled DA for other global UFS-based applications. Foci include coupled DA techniques, where observations in one component of the Earth system are allowed to directly impact the state estimation in other components, and subsequent post-processing of derived model

Notice of Federal Funding Page 12 of 45 output and analysis of DA schema impacting precipitation, drought, and streamflow forecasts.

Program Area III: Fire Weather Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Forecasting

FWIC-1: Representing, investigating, and diagnosing processes in the global UFS or its components in order to forecast S2S fire activity or fire conditions in the United States.

FWIC-2: Data assimilation improvements in the global UFS to improve forecasts of S2S fire activity in the United States.

FWIC-3: Representing uncertainty in the forecasts of fire weather on S2S time scales.

2. Observations

The WPO Observations Program, in collaboration with the NWS and other NOAA stakeholders, developed the following six priorities. The priorities can be found in more detail in the Observations competition Information Sheet in the grant package associated with this announcement at https://www.grants.gov.

Obs-1: Analyses of existing weather observations. In addition to exploring and developing new types of observations, NOAA invests in the maintenance and operation of a diverse and geographically distributed array of weather observations for situational awareness and environmental modeling. However, the unique impact of individual observations, or one type of observations, from legacy platforms on weather predictions is less understood as the portfolio of various observations has grown. The development of tools that enable the examination of a network of weather observations or various observation deployment scenarios, especially those that account for cost, is highly desired. Secondarily, research that examines the relative benefit of different observations through Observing System Experiments (OSEs) with numerical weather prediction models is sought. Examples include: analysis of the importance of aircraft and radiosonde observations; strategies for reconnaissance missions; and strategies for optimization of radiosonde launches.

Obs-2: Analyses of gaps in current observations. Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) involving the operational NOAA modeling framework that evaluate the impact of spatial and temporal data gaps in the current observational network on numerical weather prediction model output are sought. The strongest

Notice of Federal Funding Page 13 of 45 proposals in this category will conduct OSSEs for several different types of current observational gaps that might inform NOAA decisions related to improving the robustness of its network. OSSEs involving future potential observing systems that are not currently deployed are outside of the scope of this priority.

Obs-3: Fire Weather. As documented by the National Wildfire Coordination Group, Fire Environment Committee's analysis in 2017, and reinforced in the 2022 ICAMS and USGEO report (Observation and Information Shortfalls in Support of Wildland Fire Activities Report) observations and decision support tools are critical priorities for improvements in the forecasting, nowcasting, and mitigation of Wildfire events. This priority seeks proposals that fall under at least one of the following categories: (1) Decision Support - the capability for a system to integrate, graphically display, and analyze fire weather observations that be used and sustained across collaborating agencies and partners, (2) Observations - for the development, demonstration and establishment of operational protocols for relevant boundary layer and fire perimeter observations, and (3) Smoke Plumes and Fire Weather Environment - expanding the capability of deployed lidar data up to and including 50,000 ft cloud height and ceiling.

Obs-4: Mesonet Boundary Layer Observations. The NOAA Science Advisory Board (SAB) Priorities for Weather Research (PWR) report documents the need for efforts to improve and expand planetary boundary layer observations. This priority solicits proposals that aim to develop and demonstrate capabilities for sustained boundary layer profile observations within formal mesonet programs to improve the operational detection and forecasts of severe weather.

Obs-5: Tropical Cyclone Observations. Tropical cyclones are extreme weather events that are capable of imparting long lasting structural, economical, and social devastation on coastal communities. This priority seeks proposals that address one or more of the following sub bullets for advancing tropical cyclone observing capabilities that aim to improve tropical cyclone predictions, situational awareness, and understanding of these systems, particularly for the tropical cyclone boundary layer. Examples include wind measurement improvements, demonstration of uncrewed systems, analysis of existing or emerging technologies, enhancing WSR-88D algorithms, and data assimilation strategies using NOAA Unified Forecast Systems.

Obs-6: Innovative observing technologies including observations of opportunity.

Innovative and nontraditional observing technologies are key in the continued advancement of current observing systems, techniques, and data delivery to improve

Notice of Federal Funding Page 14 of 45 forecast challenges, situational awareness, and critical data gaps. This priority seeks proposals that fall under at least one of the following categories: (1) Innovative Observing Technologies - proposals recommending cost effective observing technologies targeting the planetary boundary layer that hold high potential for improving severe weather forecasts and services and (2) Observations of Opportunity

- nonconventional observations that are being collected by commercial industry, states, local authorities, and private citizens, not presently part of an operational weather observing network. These nonconventional observations include data collected in densely populated urban areas, gaps in the United States and territories’ observing networks, and surrounding oceans.

3. SBES

The WPO Social Science Program (SSP), in collaboration with NWS, developed the following three priorities:

SBES-1: Develop and test methodologies that systematically collect data to understand end-users’ information ecosystems in support of weather-related decision making.

Information ecosystems are broadly defined as a system of people and organizations sharing, distributing, and/or transforming information in support of an action or decision. This may include projects that advance understanding of how various end-users access, gather, use, or value weather and other types of information from a variety of public, private, and academic sources (i.e., NOAA data, other federal data, private sector, traditional knowledge, etc.), the frequency with which end-users would like weather information updated to optimize information flow, how weather information transforms into an externally communicated message, the role of social networks and key influencers, and/or how information supports weather-related decision-making for a variety of end users.. End users include (but are not limited to) emergency managers, operational meteorologists, broadcast meteorologists, public(s), including vulnerable and/or under-represented populations, and other weather and water decision makers (e.g., water managers, utility/public works managers, insurance sector, recreational industries, etc.). Project outputs may include data, methods, and research guided recommendations that:

SBES-1(a): Identify, develop, test, and validate methodologies that systematically collect data to understand information ecosystems in support of weather-related decision making associated with flooding, precipitation (e.g., rain, snow, etc.), and/or fire weather products and services.

Notice of Federal Funding Page 15 of 45

SBES-1(b): Identify, develop, test, and validate methodologies that systematically collect data to understand operational meteorologists’ information ecosystems in support of forecast-related decision making including workflows, technology and tools (such as models or observing systems), modes of communication, and the role of practical knowledge (“know-how”).

SBES-1(c): Identify, develop, test, and validate methodologies that systematically collect data to understand information ecosystems in support of weather-related decision making among vulnerable and/or under-represented populations. This may include ways to understand how people and communities find, share, value, and trust weather information in their own local or social contexts.

SBES-1(d): Identify, develop, test, and validate methodologies that systematically collect data to understand the socioeconomic value of current and future improvements to weather and water information ecosystems (such as product or service enhancements) in support of weather-related decision making.

SBES-2: Improve understanding of how to personalize and localize visual and verbal communication of forecast risk and uncertainty, including probabilistic forecast information, for weather hazards at various spatial and temporal time-scales and lead times (e.g., ranging from minutes to subseasonal). Many forecast products display risk at a regional or national scale. While this is effective for users who have a regional or national focus, recent user feedback to NOAA suggests that this information is not “personal” or “local” enough. Rather, users need personal situation context to understand their risk. Project outputs may include data, methods, and research-guided recommendations that:

SBES-2(a): Improve the personalization or localization of NOAA’s visual displays of weather risk, confidence, uncertainty, or probabilistic information for emergency managers, and/or the public. Personalization or localization may include, but are not limited to, testing features such as zoom functions, zip code lookups, or adding vulnerability information to orient the user. Visual displays may include the use of static or interactive maps, graphics, virtual reality, or other creative visualizations.

Visual displays may explicitly or implicitly convey probabilistic information.

SBES-2(b): Improve the personalization or localization of weather risk, confidence, uncertainty, or probabilistic information through the lens of verbal communication, such as providing storm summaries or key messages that offer context and/or

Notice of Federal Funding Page 16 of 45 tailored messaging approaches that provide local forecast information for emergency managers and/or the public.

SBES-2(c): Improve the understanding of how naming storms (for any hazard type) and/or using categories, indices, or risk levels affect the personalization or localization of weather risk.

SBES-3: Improve understanding of how emergency managers integrate climate-scale considerations in short-term weather planning to improve the effectiveness of impact-based decision support services. With extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, emergency managers need to prepare for more frequent and intense weather-related impacts, relying less on historical meteorological impacts to plan for and/or communicate weather-related risks. Projects may include, but are not limited to, understanding how emergency managers might: evaluate and/or manage their risk perceptions, frame weather risk communication messages, develop or adapt weather-related emergency operations plans, and/or use innovative approaches to conduct short-term, weather-related hazard mitigation planning; to address future weather-related impacts in a changing climate. Project outputs may include data, methods, and/or research-guided recommendations to improve climate-scale considerations within impact-based decision support for short-term weather hazards.

4. VORTEX-USA

The VORTEX-USA program priorities, briefly described here, can be found in more detail in the competition Information Sheet in the grant package associated with this announcement at https://www.grants.gov. The latest version of the VORTEX Science Plan is available at https://inside.nssl.noaa.gov/vsecommunity/wp-content/uploads/sites/34/2020/11/Science_Assessment_Sep2020_formatted_V2.pdf.

VORTEX-USA-1: Studies that compare the validity of three-dimensional winds obtained through single-Doppler data assimilation versus dual- or multi-Doppler wind synthesis in non-classic (potentially) tornadic storms.

VORTEX-USA-2: Understanding and reducing societal vulnerability to tornadoes. This topic has three main emphases that are of a strongly interdisciplinary nature: 1) investigating how physical, social, and economic factors interact to contribute to harm, and which intersections in particular contribute to severity of impact in different regional, local and household circumstances; 2) understanding different populations’

Notice of Federal Funding Page 17 of 45 capacities and current practices that can be utilized and leveraged to alleviate vulnerabilities and reduce harm from tornadoes in the Southeast and other regions;

and 3) understanding the factors and decisions that enhance individual survival of tornadoes under different circumstances.

VORTEX-USA-3: Explore processes relevant to low-level vorticity generation and tornado formation utilizing data from previous VORTEX-SE field campaigns.

VORTEX-USA-4: Explore refined or novel predictors of tornadoes in the Southeast utilizing the sounding archive developed through previous VORTEX-Southeast field campaigns and other appropriate data.

VORTEX-USA-5: Research on operational NWS and partners’ forecast and warning decision-making process, and public response. The two main emphases in this topic are 1) investigating forecasters’ interpretations and use of different types of information in decisions about whether, when, and how to issue warnings and other products; and 2) understanding how probabilistic hazard and warning information affects the forecast and warning process and information gaps that contribute to uncertainty and challenges in decision making.

VORTEX-USA-6: Risk communication, risk perception, and information use in protective decision making (with a focus on members of the public and other end-users). This topic has three primary emphases: 1) understanding the interpretations and uses of probabilistic hazard information, warnings, and other information by different members of the public in different circumstances; 2) investigating intersections among information, vulnerabilities, and capacities, and 3) protective decision making, which needs to take account of sheltering options that exist and the alternatives, especially for vulnerable populations and underserved living in vulnerable structures.

C. Program Authority

Public Law 115-25 Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017, 15 U.S.C. 8512(c).

II. Award Information

A. Funding Availability

Notice of Federal Funding Page 18 of 45

The total available funding and total per-project or per-project-per-year funding limits for each project for each competition are identified below and vary by competition. These estimates are based on either actual or anticipated NOAA funding availability. For the case of collaborative multi-institution projects, the amounts identified below are per-project (or annual project total) amounts and not per-institution amounts. Please confirm that the requested funding amounts in your application’s budget satisfy these stated maximum limits before submitting your application to a particular competition. Any proposal that exceeds the stated per-project or per-project-per-year funding limit below for the competition to which it is submitted will be rejected and not reviewed. For information on the maximum project time period for each competition, please see Section II.B “Project/Award Period” below.

Funds allocated for each competition may be altered depending on the number and quality of proposals submitted within each competition, and federal funding appropriations. Funding of any proposal is contingent upon the availability of these NOAA funds. “M” refers to millions of U.S. dollars. “K” refers to thousands of U.S. dollars.

1. Innovations for Community Modeling Approximate total award funding per year: $5.0 M Expected number of funded projects: 10–15 Maximum funding limit per project per year: $500 K

2. Observations Approximate total award funding per year: $4.5 M Expected number of funded projects: 10–16 Maximum funding limit per project per year: $300 K

3. SBES

Approximate total award funding per year: $1.5 M Expected number of funded projects: 7–10 Maximum funding limit per project per year: $250 K

4. VORTEX-USA

Approximate total award funding per year: $2.5 M Expected number of funded projects: 4–7 Maximum funding limit per project per year: $500 K

B. Project/Award Period

The maximum time period of awards is 2 years, except for the VORTEX-USA program, Notice of Federal Funding Page 19 of 45 which supports awards of up to 3 years. Any proposal that exceeds the stated duration for the competition to which it is submitted will be rejected and not reviewed. The recommended project start date for all programs is August 1, 2023. Applicants are advised to use this date as the project start date in their proposal.

Maximum Award Length: 2 years (3 years for VORTEX-USA) Start Date: August 1, 2023

The formal award is subject to the availability of funds. It is possible that NOAA may delay the start of some awards due to delays in Congressional budget appropriations or other circumstances that would prevent the formal award by the start date defined by the Principal Investigator (PI) in the proposal package. In these instances, the PI will be informed of any schedule revisions. In the event of a lapse in government appropriations, assume that there is no change to the regularly scheduled start date unless a revised schedule has been announced.

C. Type of Funding Instrument

The funding instrument for these awards will be either a grant or a cooperative agreement. If it is proposed or anticipated that NOAA employees will be substantially involved in the research or implementation of the project, the funding instrument will be a cooperative agreement. Examples of substantial involvement may include, but are not limited to, collaboration between NOAA scientists and a recipient scientist or contemplation by NOAA of detailing federal personnel to work on proposed projects. NOAA will make decisions regarding the use of a cooperative agreement or grant on a case by-case basis based on the nature of the work proposed in the application package. All awards that fund projects intending to utilize one of NOAA’s testbeds are expected to be awarded as a cooperative agreement due to the planned involvement of NOAA staff in the testbed demonstration testing. Funding for contractual arrangements for services and products for delivery to NOAA is not available under this announcement.

Approved funding allocated for collaborators at federal NOAA institutions shall be awarded by an intra agency fund transfer. Inter-Agency Agreement (IAA) fund transfers to non- NOAA federal agencies are not permitted under the funding opportunities in this notice.

For collaborative projects involving investigators from multiple, separate institutions requesting federal assistance, separate awards will be issued to each institution that submits an approved proposal for those projects.

Notice of Federal Funding Page 20 of 45

III. Eligibility Information

A. Eligible Applicants

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.

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

Notice of Federal Funding Page 21 of 45 funding. NOAA will verify this requirement if the proposal is recommended for funding.

B. Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement

No cost sharing is required under this announcement.

C. Other Criteria that Affect Eligibility

None.

IV. Application and…