[Federal Register: January 22, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 14)]
[Notices]
[Page 3126-3129]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr22ja04-39]
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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Office of Science Financial Assistance Program Notice DE-FG01-
04ER04-10; Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program
AGENCY: U.S. Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice inviting grant applications.
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SUMMARY: The Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) of
the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby
announces its interest in receiving applications for research grants in
experimental and theoretical studies of the effects of clouds on the
atmospheric radiation balance in conjunction with the Atmospheric
Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program as part of the U.S. Global Climate
Change Science Program (USCCSP). This notice requests new applications
and renewal applications of grants currently funded by DOE under
previous ARM Program notices that are relevant to the terms of
reference for this announcement and responsive to the particular needs
defined below.
DATES: Applicants are encouraged (but not required) to submit a brief
preapplication for programmatic review. The deadline for submission of
preapplications is March 15, 2004. Early submission of preapplications
is encouraged to allow time for meaningful responses.
Formal applications submitted in response to this notice must be
received by 4:30 p.m., E.D.T., April 9, 2004, to be accepted for merit
review and to permit timely consideration for award in Fiscal Year
2005. Awards are expected to begin on or about November 1, 2004.
ADDRESSES: Preapplications referencing Program Notice DE-FG01-04ER04-
10, may be sent to the program contact, Dr. Wanda Ferrell, via
electronic mail at: wanda.ferrell@science.doe.gov or by U.S. Postal
Service Mail at: Dr. Wanda Ferrell, Office of Biological and
Environmental Research, Climate Change Research Division, SC-74/
Germantown Building, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave.,
SW., Washington, DC 20585-1290. Electronic mail is recommended to speed
up response to preapplications.
Formal applications referencing Program Notice DE-FG01-04ER04-10,
must be sent electronically by an authorized institutional business
official through DOE's Industry Interactive Procurement System (IIPS)
at: http://e-center.doe.gov/. IIPS provides for the posting of
solicitations and receipt of applications in a paperless environment
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via the Internet. In order to submit applications through IIPS, your
business official will need to register at the IIPS website. IIPS
offers the option of using multiple files, please limit submissions to
one volume and one file if possible, with a maximum of no more than
four PDF files. The Office of Science will include attachments as part
of this notice that provide the appropriate forms in PDF fillable
format that are to be submitted through IIPS. Color images should be
submitted in IIPS as a separate file in PDF format and identified as
such. These images should be kept to a minimum due to the limitations
of reproducing them. They should be numbered and referred to in the
body of the technical scientific grant application as Color image 1,
Color image 2, etc. Questions regarding the operation of IIPS may be e-
mailed to the IIPS Help Desk at: HelpDesk@pr.doe.gov, or you may call
the help desk at: (800) 683-0751. Further information on the use of
IIPS by the Office of Science is available at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html
.
If you are unable to submit an application through IIPS, please
contact the Grants and Contracts Division, Office of Science at: (301)
903-5212 or (301) 903-3604, in order to gain assistance for submission
through IIPS or to receive special approval and instructions on how to
submit printed applications.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Wanda Ferrell, Office of
Biological and Environmental Research, Climate Change Research
Division, SC-74, Germantown Building, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000
Independence Ave., SW., Washington, DC 20585-1290, telephone (301) 903-
0043, fax (301) 903-8519, Internet e-mail address:
wanda.ferrell@science.doe.gov. Program information is available on:
http://www.science.doe.gov/ober/CCRD/arm.html.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program. Two major
scientific objectives of the Climate Change Research Division (CCRD)
are: (1) To improve the performance of predictive models of the Earth's
climate, and (2) to thereby make more accurate predictions of the
response of the climate system to increasing concentrations of
greenhouse gases. The purpose of the ARM Program is to improve the
treatment of radiation and clouds in the General Circulation Models
(GCMs) used to predict future climate. This program is one component of
the U.S. Climate Change Science Program that has the goal to improve
the capability to accurately simulate and predict climate and climate
change. The major component of the ARM Program involves gathering data
for the development and testing of models of the atmospheric radiation
transfer, properties of clouds, and the full life cycle of clouds with
the ultimate goal of developing cloud system resolving models (CSRM)
that directly and accurately simulate cloud-scale physical processes
and that can be incorporated into the Multi-Scale Modeling Framework
(MMF), also referred to as super parameterization. The ARM program has
established sites in three climatic regimes where cloud and radiation
data are collected. The first site, Southern Great Plains (SGP), began
operation in calendar year 1992, with instruments spread over an area
of approximately 60,000 sq. km., centered on Lamont, Oklahoma. The SGP
was chosen as a field measurement site for several reasons including
its relatively homogenous geography, wide variability of climate, cloud
type, and surface flux properties, and large seasonal variation in
temperature and specific humidity. The Tropical Western Pacific (TWP)
site is the area roughly between 10 [deg]N to 10 [deg]S of the equator
from Indonesia to near Christmas Island. The TWP site consists of
stations at Darwin, Australia, and on the islands of Manus, Papua, New
Guinea and the Republic of Nauru, respectively. This region was
selected as an ARM site because it plays a large role in the
interannual variability observed in the global climate system. The
third site, the North Slope of Alaska (NSA), is located at Barrow,
Alaska, with a secondary, inland site near Atqasuk. The NSA site was
selected as an ARM site because it provides data about cloud and
radiative processes at high latitudes, and by extension, about cold and
dry regions of the atmosphere in general. Construction of an ARM Mobile
Facility (AMF) was begun in late 2003 with the first deployment
expected in late 2004. The AMF has been designed to address science
questions beyond those investigated at the current fixed sites. The AMF
will deploy instrumentation and data systems similar to those at the
fixed ARM sites in NSA and TWP. The AMF will be deployed to sites
around the world in various climatic regimes and sites of opportunity
for durations of 6 to 18 months to study the effects of clouds and
other atmospheric conditions and properties on radiation. The ARM
sites, both mobile and fixed, have been designated as a user facility,
the ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF). Thus, AMF deployments and
campaigns at the fixed ARM sites will be determined by a review by the
ACRF Science Review Board.
Request for Grant Applications
This notice requests applications for grants, both new and renewal
that address the broad ARM goal of improving the representation of
cloud and radiation processes in climate models. The research areas of
interest include the development of algorithms for retrieving the
required measurements, studies to improve the understanding of cloud
and radiation physical processes, the translation of process study
results into process models and parameterizations, and the
incorporation of the submodels into climate models. ARM data consist of
time series of vertical profiles of certain observables while
parameterizations are geared to produce statistical cloud and radiation
properties on the scale of several hundred kilometers. Since the format
is not amenable to modelers, research is also needed to develop tools
and methodologies for making ARM data more useful for the development
and testing of submodels.
Specific areas of interest to the ARM program include, but are not
limited to:
[sbull] Developing new techniques to retrieve the properties of ice
clouds and mixed-phase clouds from ARM data.
[sbull] Conducting analyses for improving our understanding of
cloud and radiation processes including of the 3D cloud-radiation
process at scales from the local atmospheric column to the GCM grid
square and the relationship between atmospheric radiation and the life-
cycle of ice clouds and mixed-phase clouds.
[sbull] Developing and testing new cloud and radiation submodels
for global climate models.
[sbull] Incorporating new cloud and radiation submodels into global
climate models and demonstrating the improved performance of the
models.
[sbull] Developing and applying methodologies to use ARM data more
effectively in atmospheric models, both at the cloud resolving model
scale and the global climate model scale.
[sbull] Quantifying the effects of aerosols on cloud properties and
the resulting radiation field, using some combination of ARM
observations and physical models.
Applications are especially encouraged that utilize ARM generated
data in the above activities.
All applications submitted in response to this Notice must
explicitly state how the proposed research will
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support accomplishment of the BER Climate Change Research Division's
(CCRD's) Long Term Measure of Scientific Advancement to deliver
improved data and models for policymakers to determine acceptable
levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Submitted proposals that
do not contain this information will be returned without review.
Applications for research to develop new techniques to retrieve the
properties of ice clouds and mixed-phase clouds using ARM data should
target their research on methods for deriving long-term records of
cloud microphysical and macrophysical properties at multiple locations.
The improved retrieval algorithms provide bulk microphysical estimates
for clouds at all ARM fixed sites and are expected to include
uncertainty estimates.
Applications for cloud and radiation process analyses should
propose studies that elucidate radiative transfer in cloudy
atmospheres, including the overlap problem of stratiform cloud layers.
These studies may include, but are not limited to, 3-D radiative
transfer, representations of cloud overlap, mixed phase clouds, cloud
life cycles, feedback processes (especially in the Arctic), and other
processes important for clouds, such as convection and turbulence and
their effects on radiative transfer. The emphasis on the Arctic
feedback is to test the hypothesis that links large climate feedbacks
with surface and tropospheric temperatures, surface albedo, cloud
cover, deep ocean water production (the global thermohaline ocean
circulation pump), and the polar atmospheric heat sink.
Applications for research to develop and test new cloud and
radiation process models should focus on investigating the validity of
assumptions that are associated with such models and how well the
ensemble of cloud and radiation sub models simulate clouds and their
effect on radiation fields in the climate models.
Applications requesting funds to study incorporation of cloud and
radiation parameterizations into global climate models and
demonstrating the improved performance of the models are expected to
provide a clear plan describing the method to be used to quantify the
model improvement. Applicants are strongly encouraged to utilize the
tools that have been developed for this purpose in the Climate Change
Prediction Program--ARM Parameterization Testbed (CAPT) (http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/capt/
) effort at DOE's Program for Climate Model
Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI).
Applications for research to develop and apply methodologies to use
ARM data more effectively in atmospheric models should focus on
converting ARM data that usually consist of time series of vertical
profiles of certain observables into a form that is of improved utility
by climate modelers. This research area also includes techniques for
converting model output to a form that is equivalent ARM measurements,
thus, enabling the direct comparison of model-produced cloud properties
with ARM observations.
Applications for research to quantify the effect of aerosols on the
radiation field should focus on both the indirect and direct role of
aerosols on radiative transfer and cloud properties. Specifically the
research should relate observations of radiative fluxes and radiances
to the atmospheric composition and use these relations to develop and
test parameterizations and/or process models to accurately predict the
atmospheric radiative properties. Note, that the DOE Atmospheric
Science Program (ASP) is being reconfigured in Fiscal Year 2004, to
focus on aerosol radiative forcing with new research to be funded early
in Fiscal Year 2005, and will support aerosol research on aerosol
processes and resulting properties that influence radiation fields. A
joint ARM-ASP working group will be formed to foster and facilitate
collaborations between the two programs.
Applications that require a special field campaign, which has not
already been planned and approved by the ARM Program Manager, will not
be accepted for consideration.
To ensure that the program meets the broadest needs of the research
community and the specific needs of the DOE CCRD, successful applicants
are expected to participate as ARM Science Team members in the
appropriate working group(s) relevant to their efforts. Costs for
participation in ARM Science Team meetings and subcommittee meetings
should be based on two trips of 1 week each to Washington, DC, and two
trips of 3 days each to Chicago, Illinois.
Program Funding
It is anticipated that approximately $3 million will be available
for awards in Fiscal Year 2005, contingent upon the availability of
appropriated funds. Multiple-year funding of awards is expected, with
out-year funding also contingent upon the availability of appropriated
funds, progress of the research, and programmatic needs. The allocation
of funds within the research areas will depend upon the number and
quality of applications received. Awards are expected to begin on or
about November 1, 2004. Equal consideration will be given to renewal
and new applications. DOE is under no obligation to pay for any costs
associated with the preparation or submission of applications if an
award is not made.
Collaboration
Applicants are strongly encouraged to collaborate with researchers
in other institutions, such as: universities, industry, non-profit
organizations, federal laboratories and Federally Funded Research and
Development Centers (FFRDCs), including the DOE National Laboratories,
where appropriate, and to include cost sharing wherever feasible.
Additional information on collaboration is available in the Application
Guide for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program that is
available via the World Wide Web at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/Colab.html
.
Preapplications
Potential applicants are strongly encouraged to submit a brief
preapplication that consists of two to three pages of narrative
describing the research objectives and methods of accomplishment. These
will be reviewed relative to the scope and research needs of the ARM
Program. Principal Investigator (PI) address, telephone number, fax
number and e-mail address are required parts of the preapplication. A
response to each preapplication discussing the potential program
relevance of research that would be proposed in a formal application
generally will be communicated within 15 days of receipt. Use of e-mail
for this communication will decrease the possibility of a delay in
responses to the preapplication. The deadline for the submission of
preapplications is March 15, 2004. Applicants should allow sufficient
time so that the formal application deadline is met. SC's
preapplication policy can be found on SC's Grants and Contracts Web
site at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/preapp.html. Please
contact Dr. Wanda Ferrell (wanda.ferrell@science.doe.gov).
Merit Review
Applications will be subjected to formal merit review (peer review)
and will be evaluated against the following evaluation criteria which
are listed in descending order of importance codified at 10 CFR
605.10(d):
1. Scientific and/or Technical Merit of the Project;
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2. Appropriateness of the Proposed Method or Approach;
3. Competency of Applicant's Personnel and Adequacy of Proposed
Resources;
4. Reasonableness and Appropriateness of the Proposed Budget.
The evaluation process will include program policy factors such as
the relevance of the proposed research to the terms of the announcement
and the agency's programmatic needs. Note, external peer reviewers are
selected with regard to both their scientific expertise and the absence
of conflict-of-interest issues. Both Federal and non-Federal reviewers
will often be used, and submission of an application constitutes
agreement that this is acceptable to the investigator(s) and the
submitting institution.
The Application
Information about the development and submission of applications,
eligibility, limitations, evaluation, selection process, and other
policies and procedures may be found in the Application Guide for the
Office of Science Financial Assistance Program and 10 CFR Part 605.
Electronic access to SC's Financial Assistance Application Guide and
required forms is made available via the World Wide Web: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html
.
The technical portion of the application should not exceed twenty-
five double-spaced pages and should include detailed budgets for each
year of support requested. Applicants are asked to use the following
ordered format:
[sbull] Face Page (DOE F 4650.2 (10-91)) In block 15, also provide
the PI's phone number, fax number and e-mail address.
[sbull] Project Abstract Page; single page only, should contain
title, PI name, and abstract text
[sbull] Budget pages for each year and a budget summary of project
period (using DOE F 4620.1)
[sbull] Budget Explanation
[sbull] Project Description:
[sbull] Long Term Measure: All applications submitted in response
to this Notice must explicitly state how the proposed research will
support accomplishment of the BER Climate Change Research Division's
(CCRD's) Long Term Measure of Scientific Advancement to deliver
improved data and models for policy makers to determine acceptable
levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Submitted proposals that
do not contain this information will be returned without review.
[sbull] Literature Cited
[sbull] Collaborative Arrangements (if applicable)
[sbull] Facilities and Resources
[sbull] Biographical Sketches should be submitted in a form similar
to that of NIH or NSF (two to three pages).
[sbull] Current and Pending Support
[sbull] Letters of Collaboration (if applicable)
[sbull] Renewal applications should include a special section
entitled ``Accomplishments Under Previous Support.'' (See http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/App.html.
) This section shall
address the following:
(a) continued relevance of their work to the goals of the ARM
Program; and
(b) the contribution of work conducted under previous support to
the goals of the ARM Program, including a listing of publications and
presentations.
For researchers who do not have access to the World Wide Web (WWW),
please contact Karen Carlson, Office of Biological and Environmental
Research, Climate Change Research Division, SC-74/Germantown Building,
U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave., SW., Washington, DC
20585-1290, phone: (301) 903-3338, fax: (301) 903-8519, e-mail:
karen.carlson@science.doe.gov; for hard copies of background material
mentioned in this solicitation.
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number for this
program is 81.049, and the solicitation control number is ERFAP 10
CFR part 605.
Issued in Washington, DC, January 14, 2004.
John A. Alleva,
Director, Grants and Contracts Division, Office of Science.
[FR Doc. 04-1372 Filed 1-21-04; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P