Announcement of Opportunity
First Announcement of Opportunity for RAPID Research Proposals:
Call for Outline Bids
Closing Date: 28th March 2002
**** This call is now closed ****
The Natural Environment Research Council has established a
thematic programme on Rapid Climate Change (RAPID), with funding of £20M
over 6 years. The purpose of the RAPID programme is to improve our ability to
quantify the probability and magnitude of future rapid change in climate. The
programme aims to investigate and understand the causes of rapid climate
change, with a main (but not exclusive) focus on the role of the Atlantic
Ocean’s thermohaline circulation (THC). This first Announcement of
Opportunity (AO) targets all areas of the programme, with the exception of the
system for monitoring the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation,
for which a separate AO is being issued. Outline bids are invited to address the specific objectives
of the programme, which are:
- To support long-term direct observations of water, heat,
salt, and ice transports at critical locations in the northern North Atlantic,
to quantify the atmospheric and other (e.g. river run-off, ice sheet discharge)
forcing of these transports, and to perform process studies of ocean mixing at
northern high latitudes.
- To construct well-calibrated and time-resolved palaeo
data records of past climate change, including error estimates, with a
particular emphasis on the quantification of the timing and magnitude of rapid
change at annual to centennial time-scales.
- To develop and use high-resolution physical models to
synthesise observational data.
- To apply a hierarchy of modelling approaches to
understand the processes that connect changes in ocean convection and its
atmospheric forcing to the large-scale transports relevant to the modulation of
climate.
- To understand, using model experimentation and data
(palaeo and present day), the atmosphere’s response to large changes in
Atlantic northward heat transport, in particular changes in storm tracks, storm
frequency, storm strengths, and energy and moisture transports.
- To use both instrumental and palaeo data for the
quantitative testing of models’ abilities to reproduce climate variability
and rapid changes on annual to centennial time-scales. To explore the extent to
which these data can provide direct information about the THC and other
possible rapid changes in the climate system and their impact.
- To quantify the probability and magnitude of potential
future rapid climate change, and the uncertainties in these estimates.
The funding made available for this first AO by the Steering
Committee is ~£6-7M. The Steering Committee welcomes bids that involve
researchers from a variety of disciplines, with the aim of developing links
between the observational, palaeo and modelling elements of the programme. The
Steering Committee is also aiming to develop scientific links with the
Norwegian NOClim project , and so welcomes
bids that plan to develop such links. To enable this process a limited amount
of travel funding is available for a small number of UK scientists to attend
the next NOClim meeting in May 2002 (see
UK- Norway travel
grants for details of the meeting and how to bid for travel funding).
A ‘Town Meeting’ has been scheduled for
1st February 2002 in London. The meeting will enable the attendees
to better understand the aims of the programme, and provide an initial forum
for the development of an integrated community.
Outline bids are invited from eligible UK researchers (refer
to the NERC Research Grants
Handbook). Proposals for awards of up to 5 years’ duration will be
considered, but a specific justification is required for periods in excess of 3
years. An applicant is limited to one application as a Principal Investigator,
and one additional application as a Co-Investigator per funding round. However,
applicants are not limited to the number of applications on which they appear
as a collaborator. Successful Outline Bids will be invited for submission as a
full research proposal. For queries relating to scientific aspects of the AO
contact the Science Co-ordinator (Dr. Meric Srokosz, tel: 023-8059-6414,
e-mail: mas@soc.soton.ac.uk), and for
other aspects the Programme Co-ordinator (Dr. Catrin Yeomans, tel:
01793-442504, e-mail: cvy@nerc.ac.uk).
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