CIWRO recieves funding annually through the NOAA cooperative agreement to complete research as it aligns with our five themes: weather radar and operations, mesoscale and stormscale modeling, forecast applications improvements, subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction for extreme weather events, and social and socio-economic impacts of weather. These five themes are set by NOAA and all Task II and Task III funding must align with at least one of the CIWRO themes, in support of the NOAA mission.
Task I "base" funding, from NOAA through our cooperating OAR, NWS, and NESDIS agencies to OU, is used to support administrative staff and postdoctoral and visiting scientists. Task I funding also supports the education and outreach activities conducted by CIWRO. The supervision and administration of Task I personnel is principally conducted by the OU CIWRO management. Task I rates are set by the NOAA Cooperative Institute Administrative Office annually.
Task II "non-base" funding, from NOAA through OU to CIWRO is used to support research associates, research scientists, postdoctoral researchers, graduate research assistants, and undergraduate researchers. Scientific direction of these employees is provided jointly by CIWRO leadership and the NOAA unit. Task II research projects include substantial scientific involvement from NOAA research staff. Staff supported with these funds are all OU employees.
Task III funds arrive from successfully-funded proposals to NOAA that are submitted by consortium partners, CIWRO research staff, and other OU entities (CAPS, ARRC, OCS, SoM, IPPRA, etc.) and are funded through the cooperative agreement (to make it easier on both OU and NOAA) and for projects funded by NOAA to CIWRO personnel that are outside their normal work with our NOAA partners. This work is done primarily without substantial involvement from NOAA research staff.
Other agency funding comes to OU and (through OU) to the NOAA units from agencies other than NOAA in response to proposal submissions, generally on a competitive basis. Principle Investigators are CIWRO scientists and CIWRO fellows (including NOAA researchers who serve as CIWRO fellows). A wide variety of agencies have been involved in recent years, including the National Science Foundations, NASA, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. EPA, USGS, UCAR/NCAR, the MacArthur Foundation, and many others.
