NOAA’s Weather Program Office Awards $3.74 Million for Critical Improvements in Weather Forecasting

The Weather Program Office is proud to announce the FY24 Awards for the FY24 Notice of Funding Opportunity competition (NOFO). WPO competitively funds research from across the Weather Enterprise (government, academia, and the private sector) to improve weather observation and prediction. In FY24, WPO solicited research proposals to improve fire weather observations and forecasts and advance NOAA’s operational subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) prediction capabilities.

The two grant competitions from the FY24 NOFO are valued at approximately $1.87 million per year. This year, WPO selected six projects from these two programs:

  • Fire Weather
  • Climate Testbed

More information about each program’s newly funded projects is below.

Fire Weather

Developing a Coupled Wildfire-Weather Unified Forecast System to Improve Fire Prediction

For predictions of wildfire and smoke by enhancing data assimilation and advancing modeling and forecasting techniques.

See the FY24 Funded Projects >

FY24 Funded Projects By the Numbers

More Research to Fill Gaps in Forecasting

In Fiscal Year 2024, the Weather Program Office funded six new projects aimed at critical forecast improvements for weather. Each of the two competitions focused on their areas of expertise to fill identified gaps in weather research and transition weather applications into operations.
2 New Funding Competitions
6 Projects Funded
8 Institutions Funded
$3.74 Million to Advance Fire Weather and Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Forecasting Capabilities

Climate Testbed

Advancing Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Forecasting Capabilities Through Improved Precipitation Outlooks and Data Assimilation

Improve operational climate outlooks and advance NOAA’s subseasonal to seasonal prediction (S2S) capabilities via improved precipitation outlooks.

See the FY24 Funded Projects >

The Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) Hydrometeorology Testbed - Hydro (hereafter denoted as HMT-Hydro) experiment is a part of the United States Weather Research Program (USWRP) through the Hydrometeorology Testbed (HMT) that runs from 25 June to 20 July 2018. During the HMT-Hydro experiment, forecasters and hydrologists from the National Weather Service (NWS) will work with National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) research scientists to assess new technology and techniques to improve the prediction and warning of flash flooding. In particular, NWS participants will evaluate new probabilistic hydrologic modeling concepts and output within the Flooded Locations and Simulated Hydrographs (FLASH) system that could help convey the uncertainty of the flash flood threat. NWS participants will also evaluate high resolution precipitation forecasts from the NSSL Warn-on-Forecast (WoF) project and the addition of these forecasts into the FLASH system. Feedback from participants will allow NSSL research scientists to identify how these precipitation forecasts could influence the warning decision making process, including the potential for increased warning lead time. The HMT-Hydro experiment runs in conjunction with the Flash Flood and Intense Rainfall (FFaIR) experiment at the Weather Prediction Center (WPC) to collaborate on the short-term forecasting of flash flooding for both a national and regional scale.

FY24 Notice of Funding Announcement

FY24 Notice of Funding Documentation

Click on the image to see the NOFO at-a-glance, or view the details of the competition by accessing the original announcement at Grants.Gov.

View Announcement
FY24 NOFO At a Glance

See all Funded Projects

Fiscal Year 2024 Full Award List

Project Title PI’s & Co-PI’s Affiliations
Development and Evaluation of the Warn-on-Forecast System for Smoke (WoFS-Smoke) Thomas A. Jones (PI), Patrick Skinner, Joshua Martin, Brian Matilla University of Oklahoma
Towards Improved Representations of Wildfire-ABL Interactions in the UFS Modeling Suite: Parameterization Development, Emissions Modeling, and Air Quality Impact Assessment Khaled Ghannam (PI), Daniel Tong Northeastern University, George Mason University
Improving the Aerosol Representation and Coupling to Microphysics in the 3-km Storm-Scale Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) Haiqin Li (PI) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)/University of Colorado Boulder (UCB), NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL)
Project Title PI’s & Co-PI’s Affiliations
Advancing S2S Precipitation Outlooks through the Weather Regime-Gaussian Mixture Model Framework Wei Zhang (PI), Cory Baggett Utah State University, NOAA/NWS/Climate Prediction Center (CPC)
Improving Global Ocean Reanalysis (Glore) to Advance Cpc Ocean Monitoring and Sea Ice Outlook Bohua Huang (PI), Jieshun Zhu, Wanqiu Wang George Mason University, NOAA/NWS/Climate Prediction Center (CPC)
Improving Week 3-4 Precipitation Forecasts by Leveraging Forecasts-Of-Opportunity Identified via Explainable Machine Learning Marybeth Arcodia (PI), Elizabeth Barnes, Dan Collins, Emerson LaJoie Colorado State University, NOAA/NWS/Climate Prediction Center (CPC)

Other Years’ Funded Projects

Explore projects from the past two fiscal years at the links below.

FY23 Projects
FY22 Projects