FY2022 Weather Program Office Research Programs | NOAA OAR WPO 2022 2006969

Opportunity Information: Apply for NOAA OAR WPO 2022 2006969

The FY2022 Weather Program Office (WPO) Research Programs funding opportunity is a NOAA grant and cooperative agreement solicitation that supports research designed to strengthen weather and water forecasting and related public services. Run by NOAA's Weather Program Office (formerly the Office of Weather and Air Quality), the program looks for proposals that span a wide range of topics in weather, atmospheric composition, and earth system modeling and observations. The intent is to fund work that addresses science and technology gaps across multiple time scales, from short-fuse weather events measured in hours to longer-range outlooks on subseasonal and seasonal horizons. It also explicitly welcomes work that connects physical science advances to real-world decision-making, including research on fire weather and projects that incorporate social, behavioral, and economic science to improve how forecast information is communicated and used.

Funding is organized into six distinct competitions, collectively valued at about $16.5 million per year, reflecting NOAA's priority areas for improving forecasting skill, tools, and applications. The six competitions are: (1) Fire Weather and Atmospheric Composition (FWAC), which targets the science and tools needed to better understand and predict wildfire-related weather conditions and air quality impacts; (2) Climate Testbed (CTB), which focuses on developing, testing, and evaluating modeling and analysis approaches that can improve climate and climate-related prediction capabilities; (3) Weather Testbeds, which generally emphasize hands-on evaluation of new observing strategies, modeling components, and forecast techniques in realistic, quasi-operational environments; (4) the Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI), which is centered on moving promising research results toward usable, transition-ready capabilities and applications; (5) Subseasonal-to-Seasonal (S2S), which aims to advance prediction skill in the challenging middle range between weather and seasonal climate outlooks; and (6) VORTEX-USA, the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment in the United States, which supports research tied to tornado-related processes, observations, and understanding of rotating storms and their precursors.

A major theme of the opportunity is accelerating the path from research to usable outcomes. NOAA is looking for projects that do more than publish findings; applicants are expected to produce outputs that are "transitionable," meaning prototype products, datasets, methods, or software that NOAA or partners could further mature into practical applications or operations. This emphasis is aligned with the Weather Forecasting and Innovation Act of 2017 (Public Law 115-25), which calls for strong engagement between NOAA and the external research community to address shared priorities and close key knowledge gaps that limit forecast performance and service delivery. In practical terms, NOAA wants proposals that demonstrate relevance to operational needs, show awareness of who would use the results, and outline a credible strategy for how the work could be adopted, sustained, or scaled beyond the research phase.

For any proposal that includes forecast model development, NOAA sets a clear requirement: improvements must focus on the Unified Forecast System (UFS). The UFS is NOAA's community-based modeling framework intended to unify weather-to-climate prediction systems, and this solicitation directs applicants to develop within that ecosystem rather than in stand-alone models. The work is also expected to be responsive to forecaster priorities that NOAA gathered through workshops, with a referenced list of top requests provided in NOAA materials. In other words, model and technique improvements should be driven by the problems forecasters face in practice, such as better representation of key processes, more reliable guidance in high-impact situations, improved precipitation and severe weather prediction, and other operationally meaningful capabilities.

NOAA frames project expectations using Readiness Levels (RLs), a 1-to-9 scale that tracks maturity from early-stage research (low RLs) through development and demonstration toward deployment (higher RLs). The notice explains that different competitions may favor different maturity stages depending on their objectives, and applicants should be prepared to describe the current maturity of their work and how the project would move it forward along the RL spectrum. At the same time, NOAA is explicit about a boundary condition: while the programs encourage acceleration toward operationalization and application, they do not directly fund the final transition into NOAA operations itself (described as the RL 8-to-9 step). Instead, funded teams are expected to coordinate with NOAA operational center representatives and develop a transition strategy if eventual operational implementation is a realistic goal.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity under the Department of Commerce, with awards made as grants and cooperative agreements. The CFDA number listed is 11.459. NOAA anticipated a relatively large award portfolio (expected awards listed as 56), with an award ceiling of $1.5 million per award. The opportunity was posted in late August 2021, with an original closing date in mid-November 2021. Eligibility is broadly indicated as "Others" with additional detail referenced in the full notice, which typically means the solicitation may be open to a mix of institutions such as universities, nonprofits, private entities, and other qualified organizations depending on the specific competition requirements.

Taken together, the core purpose of the FY2022 WPO Research Programs is to fund applied, high-impact research that improves NOAA-relevant observing and forecasting capabilities across weather, water, climate, and air quality, while keeping a strong focus on real operational needs. The programs are structured to encourage collaboration with NOAA and the broader community, use common frameworks like the UFS for modeling advances, and produce outputs that are ready to be tested, evaluated, and ultimately matured into tools that can improve forecasts and the public services built on them.

• The Department of Commerce in the environment, natural resources, science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "FY2022 Weather Program Office Research Programs" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 11.459.
• This funding opportunity was created on Aug 24, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Nov 17, 2021. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 56 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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