# FY2025 Weather Program Office Research Program Announcement - Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES)

Source: https://welltoldgrants.com/grants/noaa-oar-wpo-2025-28598-fy2025-weather-program-office-research-program-announcement/  
Official notice: https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/356452

> DOC NOAA - ERA Production offered grants of up to $500,000 (at least $100,000) to the applicants described in the notice. Applications closed on December 2, 2024.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Opportunity number | NOAA-OAR-WPO-2025-28598 |
| Agency | DOC NOAA - ERA Production |
| Status | Forecast |
| Deadline | December 2, 2024 |
| Award ceiling | $500,000 |
| Award floor | $100,000 |
| Expected awards | not stated |
| Total funding | not stated |
| Cost sharing | not required |
| Assistance Listings | 11.459 |

## Who can apply

- Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)

Applicants are responsible for ensuring that they are eligible for this competition and identify with the appropriate title listed hereafter. The following entities are eligible and encouraged to participate in this funding opportunity, in conjunction with the Weather Program office: any public or private corporation, partnership, or other association or entity or any State, political subdivision of a State, Tribal government or agency or officer thereof. Non-NOAA federal agencies and their personnel are not permitted to receive federal funding under this competition; however, federal scientists and other employees can serve as uncompensated partners or co-Principal Investigators on applications. Federal labs and offices can also make available specialized expertise, facilities or equipment to applicants but cannot be compensated under this competition for their use, nor can the value of such assets be used as a match. If any applicants requesting funding are ineligible, the application(s) will be rejected without review. To be eligible to apply or receive an award, applicant organizations must complete and maintain three system registrations and access to include: SAM.gov, Grants.gov, and eRA Commons. For each, the complete registration process can take 4 to 6 weeks, so applicants must begin this activity as soon as possible and well before the proposal due date. For more information on how to meet these registration and application submission requirements without errors, we advise all to carefully review relevant eRA Applicant and Grantee Training modules: https://www.commerce.gov/ocio/programs/gems/applicant-and-grantee-training. Additionally, we advise that all applicants carefully read “Additional Application Package Forms” within the “Full Proposal Required Elements” section below. No foreign applicants based outside of the U.S. may request funding. Applicability to Federal Employees and Federal Contractors: Federal employees (hereafter referred to as “federal collaborator(s)”) may serve as co-Principal Investigators (co-PIs) or co-Investigators (co-Is) but their salary costs are ineligible expenses to be covered by awards from this NOFO. NOAA Federal applicants are 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.K “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, prospective PIs that are also employed as federal contractors 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 General Information Sheet. Allowed: NOAA federal collaborator travel is only eligible in critical project-dependent cases. Other allowable expenses include project-critical equipment, indirect costs for NOAA affiliate institutions, infrastructure, and testbed-related costs.NOT Allowed: Conference and workshop travel. 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 funding. NOAA will verify this requirement if the proposal is recommended for funding.

## What the grant funds

NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO, wpo.noaa.gov/nofo) is soliciting proposals for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES) grant competition from this funding opportunity notification. The program competition's approximate total award funding per year is $1,500,000.00. 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. Additionally, 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-development of improved products” (p.6 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 a progressive spectrum from research to development to demonstration to deployment. 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.

## Questions people ask

### Is NOAA-OAR-WPO-2025-28598 still open?

No. It closed on December 2, 2024.

### Who can apply for FY2025 Weather Program Office Research Program Announcement - Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES)?

DOC NOAA - ERA Production accepted applications from the applicants described in the notice. The notice adds further conditions, so read its eligibility section.

### What is the deadline for FY2025 Weather Program Office Research Program Announcement - Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES)?

Closed December 2, 2024. Applications are no longer accepted; the program's newer notices are on this page when there are any.

### How much funding is available?

Awards of up to $500,000 each.

### Who has won Weather and Air Quality Research grants before?

The largest recipients over five fiscal years were University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, University of Oklahoma, Mississippi State University. The program made 268 awards worth $132 million in that time.