Met Éireann Research Call 2023 is a competitive research call for applications, open to all Irish Higher Education Institutions. Two research topics of specific interest are described: TRANSLATE Call 2023 and Code Performance Call 2023 :
1. Met Éireann – TRANSLATE Call 2023
Climate services are scientifically based information and products that enhance users’ knowledge and understanding about the impacts of climate on their decisions and actions. These services are made most effective through collaboration between providers and users.
This topic is aimed at building on the TRANSLATE project’s outputs to standardise climate projections and to develop national climate service products (which will be made available to the applicants), with a greater emphasis on making products already developed available, developing training/communication material and supporting stakeholder queries and stakeholder needs.
Project-based applications from research teams within Irish HEIs are sought.
International collaboration is desirable (demonstration of collaboration with international partners will attract additional marks).
Max. total budget: €800k
Max. total months: 24
Expected deliverables include:
A. Further develop the standardised climate projections for Ireland
Build on outputs from TRANSLATE helping to make this premium data set more usable. Areas of interest include:
- Maintain the standardised projection dataset developed under TRANSLATE and increase the ensemble membership to include suitable CMIP6 and HCLIM climate projections covering Ireland.
- Develop and provide standardised climatological parameters including wind, solar radiation, relative humidity plus more.
- Integrate standardised projection datasets into national climate service infrastructures (e.g. Climate Ireland, Met Éireann).
- Develop a training course to train national climate service developers in the use of these Irish standardised climate projections.
- Support queries including data retrieval queries on the standardised projection dataset.
B. Develop and collate case studies demonstrating the climate service development cycle
- Identify priority climate service requirement from user needs.
- Develop a climate service using the national standardised climate projections and WMO best international practice.
- Integrate output into the National Framework for Climate Services and operationalise as appropriate.
- Publish peer reviewed paper, project report and promotional/educational material
C. Develop sector specific climate services
- Following methodologies developed under TRANSLATE to further develop indices and climate risk based products.
- Integrate these into the National Framework for Climate Services.
- Support the development of the National Adaptation Framework and Sectoral Adaptation plans with climate service products.
D. Develop Irish climate change scenarios and storylines
It is envisioned that work in this area will focus on some or more of the following topics:
- Conduct review of international examples of climate change scenarios and storylines.
- Host workshop to develop appropriate Irish scenarios, including low likelihood, high-impact scenarios (High++), with cross-sector relevance.
- Develop these scenarios analysing the national standard projections.
- Develop and execute a communication strategy including the development of graphical communication assets and appropriate online hosting.
Funding will be provided on a discretionary basis by Met Éireann to a Grantee on the terms and subject to the conditions set out in the Research Call’s Terms and Conditions to undertake a Project for a maximum of 2 years and a maximum budget of €800k.
2. Met Éireann – Code Performance Call 2023
Met Éireann’s Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) activities require collaboration and involvement in a number of international consortia and projects. Research and development of the operational HARMONIE-AROME model is carried out within the 26-partner ACCORD consortium, in which Met Éireann is heavily involved. From 2023, joint operations will be shared with the UWC-West national meteorological centres on a common high-performance computing (HPC) system, and it is expected that these four partners will be joined by six others in operating a common federated HPC system by the end of the decade (UWC).
Scientific and technological advances continue to push operational NWP models to higher and higher resolutions. At present there is significant interest in the performance and potential of limited-area models, such as HARMONIE-AROME, running at horizontal resolutions of the order of a few hundred metres, with the aim of improved prediction of extreme weather events. The Destination Earth project, an initiative by the European Commission, is one of the drivers of these developments. Despite the advances, however, there are serious concerns over the future scalability and efficiency of NWP and climate models, and the ability of the current codes to optimally exploit emerging HPC architectures.
Applications to contribute to the international research and development on the performance of NWP codes on emerging HPC systems are sought in this topic.
In collaboration with the NWP team at Met Éireann and international colleagues, the successful research team will enable model software to run efficiently on the latest HPC technology, in particular exploring novel architectures such as GPUs along with traditional CPUs, and the coding changes required to properly exploit these. This work will also be linked with ACCORD’s transversal work package SPTR1, “Addressing future evolutions of software infrastructure”.
Project-based applications from research teams within Irish HEIs are sought.
International collaboration is desirable (demonstration of collaboration with international partners will attract additional marks).
Max. total budget: €600k
Max. total months: 24
Expected deliverables include:
a) Development of the HARMONIE-AROME code in a range of possible areas
Including:
- Code refactoring and adapting model cycles to existing and emerging technologies such as GPUs, and optimising for existing HPC platforms
- Implementing and evaluating the Atlas framework of the ECMWF into the limited-area HARMONIE-AROME system
- Use of domain-specific language (DSL) toolchains to generate efficient hardware-specific code
b) Collaboration with international NWP consortia and contribution to related activities
c) Communication of results to various audiences and stakeholders, including publication of reports or scientific papers as appropriate
Funding will be provided on a discretionary basis by Met Éireann to a Grantee on the terms and subject to the conditions set out in the Research Call Programme’s Terms and Conditions to undertake a Project for a maximum of 2 years and a maximum budget of €600k.
Met Éireann Research Call 2023 – Requirement
A lead applicant will be requested to closely collaborate and ensure knowledge transfer with Met Éireann and its stakeholders.
Met Éireann Research Call 2023 – Governance Structure
To ensure each Project is implemented in line with best practice, Project steering committees of experts will be established. Prior to this, Project evaluation boards will be established to select the most appropriate research proposals.
Met Éireann Research Call 2023 – Indicative Project timelines
The following are Met Éireann Research Call 2023’s indicative timelines:
January 2023 Publish Research Call 2023
March 2023 Applications Deadline
March/April 2023 Evaluate proposals
Q2 2023 Award contracts
Q2/Q3 2023 Successful applicants begin Projects
Q2/3 2023 – Q2/3 2025 Projects ongoing
Dates
- Call open: Tuesday 24th January 2023
- Call deadline: Friday 3rd March 2023 at 17:00
- The system will automatically prevent application submission after the deadline
- Results expected: Q2 2023
Submission platform
Please use the Met Éireann grant platform to submit your application (best with Edge, Firefox or Chrome), following the instructions therein: https://meteireann.grantplatform.com/.
Terms and Conditions
Please read our Terms & Conditions before submitting your application.
Appeals process
The Met Éireann Research Call Programme’s appeals process is available here.
Reviewers code of conduct
The Met Éireann Research Call Programme’s reviewers code of conduct is available here.
Support
If you have any questions on the application process, please contact Met Éireann’s Research Funding Office by email to researchfunding@met.ie.