NSF NCAR Strategic Projects

The NSF NCAR Directorate is supporting a number of cross-lab projects and other priority programs that are fundamental to helping the organization reach its strategic goals. Broadly speaking, these projects are designed to enhance our organization’s capabilities to engage in basic research and to better provide the actionable Earth system science information that society requires to respond to today’s grand environmental challenges.

These projects also reflect NSF NCAR’s recognition of the increasing importance and necessity of working deeply across disciplines within Earth system science to meet society’s needs. At NSF NCAR, this means intentionally and strategically fostering work that spans our eight labs and programs, bringing together meteorologists and climate scientists, atmospheric chemists and oceanographers, and hydrologists and machine learning scientists, for example.

Projects highlighted on this page are actively moving forward with Directorate support. Other NSF NCAR projects that are currently in the early planning stages will be added as they mature. However, there are many other projects across the organization that are managed at the lab and program level that are also foundational to NSF NCAR’s work and direction. Check out the lab and program pages to learn more!

Airborne Phased Array Radar (APAR)

We are designing and building a next-generation airborne radar that could revolutionize the ability to observe, understand, and ultimately predict high-impact weather events. APAR is being developed with funding from NSF and NOAA and is a generational leap forward from NSF NCAR's former tail Doppler radar. It will allow scientists to sample the atmosphere at higher spatial resolution and to peer more deeply into storms. Once completed, APAR will be deployed on our C-130 aircraft and available to the university community.

Convergence Science Program

This program is encouraging, enabling, and facilitating convergence science at NSF NCAR. Convergence science is a means of solving complex research problems that arise from pressing societal or scientific needs through deep integration across a range of disciplines. A convergence research approach is an essential tool for tackling the grand environmental challenges that face society today. NSF NCAR’s Convergence Science Program seeks to create an organization that deeply understands, values, and supports this work. Staff, visitors and affiliates are encouraged to get involved through our communities of practice.

Coronal Solar Magnetism Observatory (COSMO)

With funding from NSF, we are working on the design, as well as the site survey and selection, for a new solar observatory that offers the potential to transform our understanding of magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere and how they drive the formation of solar eruptions and other space weather that can affect technologies on Earth. COSMO consists of instruments, including a large coronagraph, that will allow researchers to study aspects of the solar corona that have never been viewed before and ultimately improve our ability to forecast coronal mass ejections and other potentially damaging solar storms.

Earth System Predictability Across Timescales

upporting society with the information needed to anticipate and respond to environmental extremes depends on advancing our ability to understand and predict Earth system behavior. ESPAT accelerates research to improve the fundamental understanding and predictability of Earth system processes and hazards—such as heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires, and solar storms—through coordinated, interdisciplinary efforts across spatial and temporal scales. Motivated by the urgent need for deeper insight and better tools, ESPAT serves as a nexus for collaborative research—advancing NCAR’s mission to support the academic community and foster the development of actionable Earth system knowledge that enables national resilience.

System for Integrated Modeling of the Atmosphere (SIMA)

SIMA is an effort to provide researchers with a framework that will allow them to answer frontier science questions by combining the capabilities of multiple NSF NCAR-supported weather, climate, chemistry, and geospace models. The configurable modeling tool will allow scientists to choose the components they need for a specific project — including resolution, grid meshes, dynamical cores, and physics packages — and then connect the resulting atmospheric model to representations of the ocean, land, and sea ice through the Community Earth System Model (CESM).