Paleo Perspectives on Present and Projected Climate | 22 612

Opportunity Information: Apply for 22 612

Paleo Perspectives on Present and Projected Climate (P4CLIMATE) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant opportunity focused on using paleoclimate evidence to improve how researchers understand today s climate and anticipate future change. The central idea is that modern instrumental records and present day climate models, while extremely valuable, usually cover only a short window of time relative to how Earth s climate actually behaves. They often do not fully capture multi decadal to millennial variability, abrupt shifts, tipping points, or threshold behavior. To see that broader range of outcomes, P4CLIMATE emphasizes data preserved in geological records and environmental archives, such as sediments, ice, corals, tree rings, speleothems, and other proxy sources that extend climate knowledge far beyond the last century.

The competition is an interdisciplinary, cross division initiative within NSF s Geosciences (GEO) Directorate. It is supported by multiple NSF units that span key parts of the climate system: the Division of Atmospheric and GeoSpace Sciences (AGS), the Division of Earth Sciences (EAR), the Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE), and the Office of Polar Programs (OPP). By design, P4CLIMATE encourages proposals that integrate expertise, datasets, and methods across these domains, for example combining proxy reconstructions with climate model experiments, linking ocean and atmospheric dynamics, or synthesizing regional records into a coherent picture of past climate states and transitions.

P4CLIMATE is structured around two main research themes. The first theme, Past Regional and Seasonal Climate, targets reconstructions and analyses that resolve how climate varied across specific regions and seasons in the past, not just global annual averages. This includes work that can clarify how drought patterns, storm tracks, monsoons, sea ice extent, ocean circulation, temperature gradients, or precipitation seasonality behaved under different boundary conditions, and how those behaviors relate to risks faced today. The second theme, Past Climate Forcing, Sensitivity, and Feedbacks, focuses on the drivers of climate change and the system s response. Projects under this theme may examine how greenhouse gases, solar variability, volcanic aerosols, ice sheets, land surface changes, and ocean circulation forced past climate shifts, and what those shifts reveal about climate sensitivity and feedback mechanisms such as water vapor, clouds, carbon cycle responses, and cryosphere interactions.

A key expectation of the solicitation is that proposals use observational and modeling approaches in a complementary way. Observational work can include collecting new proxy records, improving dating and calibration, compiling existing datasets, or developing synthesis products that enable broader inference. Modeling work can involve paleoclimate simulations, data model comparison, data assimilation, isotope enabled modeling, sensitivity experiments, or other techniques that translate past evidence into constraints on processes that matter for future projections. The emphasis on synthesis reflects NSF s interest in projects that do more than produce isolated records, aiming instead to produce integrative results that can test mechanisms, reconcile datasets, and improve understanding of climate dynamics across timescales relevant to long term planning.

The opportunity is offered as a discretionary grant under CFDA 47.050, categorized under science and technology and other research and development. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, which generally means a wide range of applicant organizations may apply as long as they meet NSF s standard requirements. The solicitation is run annually, and the listed closing date for this opportunity is 2024 10 21.

For polar research specifically, the Office of Polar Programs sets clear boundaries around fieldwork. OPP will accept proposals to this solicitation with or without fieldwork in the Arctic. For Antarctica, OPP will accept proposals only if they do not include Antarctic fieldwork. Any proposal that includes fieldwork in Antarctica is directed to NSF s separate annual solicitation dedicated to Antarctic fieldwork proposals, rather than being submitted under P4CLIMATE.

Overall, P4CLIMATE is best understood as an NSF wide effort to bring paleoclimate records and paleoclimate modeling into direct conversation with questions that matter for present day understanding and future climate projections. It supports projects that use the deep time perspective to identify the full range of climate behavior, illuminate mechanisms behind abrupt or extreme changes, and strengthen scientific foundations for anticipating thresholds, feedbacks, and regional impacts in a warming world.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Paleo Perspectives on Present and Projected Climate" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.050.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2022-07-06.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-10-21. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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