Funding-Decadal and
Regional Climate Prediction using Earth System Models (EaSM); May 11, 2012
Agency
Name
National Science
Foundation
Synopsis
The consequences of
climate variability and change are becoming more immediate and profound than
previously anticipated. Important impacts have highlighted that climate
variability and change can have significant effects on decadal and shorter time
scales, with significant consequences for plant, animal, human, and physical
systems. Such aspects include the onset of prolonged droughts on several
continents, increased frequency of floods, loss of agricultural and forest
productivity, degraded ocean and permafrost ecosystems, global sea level rise
and the rapid retreat of ice sheets and glaciers, loss of Arctic sea ice, and
changes in ocean currents.
The EaSM funding opportunity enables interagency cooperation on
one of the most pressing problems of the millennium: climate change, how it is
likely to affect our world, and how we can plan for its consequences. It allows
the partner agencies -- National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA), and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) -- to combine resources
to identify and fund the most meritorious and highest-impact projects that
support their respective missions, while eliminating duplication of effort and
fostering collaboration between agencies and the investigators they
support.
This
interdisciplinary scientific challenge calls for the development and application
of next-generation Earth System Models that include coupled and interactive
representations of such things as ocean and atmospheric currents, human
activities, agricultural working lands and forests, urban environments,
biogeochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, the water cycle and land ice. This
solicitation seeks to attract scientists from the disciplines of geosciences,
social sciences, agricultural and biological sciences, mathematics and
statistics, physics, and chemistry. Successful proposals will develop
intellectual excitement in the participating disciplinary communities and engage
diverse interdisciplinary teams with sufficient breadth to achieve the
scientific objectives. We encourage proposals that have strong broader impacts,
including public access to data and other research products of general interest,
as well as educational, diversity, or societal impacts.
The long-term goals
of this solicitation are to improve on and extend current Earth System modeling
capabilities to:
1.
Achieve
comprehensive, reliable global and regional predictions of decadal climate
variability and change through advanced understanding of the coupled interactive
physical, chemical, biological, and human processes that drive the climate
system.
2.
Quantify the impacts
of climate variability and change on natural and human systems, and identify and
quantify feedback loops.
3.
Maximize the utility
of available observational and model data for impact, vulnerability/resilience,
and risk assessments through up/downscaling activities and uncertainty
characterization.
4.
Effectively translate
climate predictions and associated uncertainties into the scientific basis for
policy and management decisions related to human interventions and adaptation to
the projected impacts of climate change.
The following are
specific areas of interest to the funding agencies for EaSM 2: (i) Research that has the
potential to dramatically improve predictive capabilities; (ii) Prediction and
attribution studies; (iii) Research that addresses critical issues linking
relevant Earth system processes over a variety of spatial and temporal scales;
(iv) Research that examines the relationships between climate variability and
change to human and natural environments from the human perspective; (v)
Development and applications of metrics, methods, and tools for testing and
evaluating climate and climate impact predictions and their uncertainty
characterization.
Announcement
Number: NSF
12-522
Due Date:
May 11,
2012
Link to Full
Announcement
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12522/nsf12522.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click
Contact
Information
·
Anjuli S. Bamzai, Directorate for Geosciences (GEO), telephone: (703)
292-8527, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Eric C. Itsweire, Directorate for Geosciences (GEO), telephone:
(703) 292-8582, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Thomas F. Russell,
Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (MPS), telephone: (703)
292-4863, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Michael Steuerwalt, Directorate for Mathematical and Physical
Sciences (MPS), telephone: (703) 292-4860, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
David McGinnis,
Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), telephone: (703)
292-7307, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
William J. Wiseman,
Office of Polar Programs (OPP),telephone: (703) 292-4750, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Peter Milne, Office
of Polar Programs (OPP), telephone: (703) 292-4714, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Nancy Cavallaro, U.S. Department of Agriculture, telephone: (202)
401-5176, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Mary Ann Rozum, U.S. Department of Agriculture, telephone: (202)
401-4533, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Renu Joseph, Department
of Energy, Office of Science (DOE-SC), Office of Biological and Environmental
Research, telephone: (301) 903-9237, email: easm2@nsf.gov
·
Dorothy Koch,
Department of Energy, telephone: (301) 903-0105, email: easm2@nsf.gov