NOTICE OF INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE TO UNIVERSITY CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH

Under this contract, NOAA expects to enhance current research and development opportunities and efforts in accordance with the similar mission goals of NOAA and UCAR/NCAR. NOAA has a continuing need for UCAR’s services for:

(a) modeling and predictability research, to include improvement in model physics, infrastructure for model coupling, testing and evaluation of models, and related data assimilation;

(b) Observations, to include instrumentation and field campaigns. This also includes exploitation of UCAR’s unique facilities related to instrument development and testing;

(c) computational and information systems for research in atmospheric and related sciences;

(d) data processing, quality control, analysis and repositories;

(e) research applications that develop and transfer knowledge and technology in areas of atmospheric and related sciences to directly impacted sectors, such as agriculture, aviation, human health, surface transportation, renewable energy, and water resources;

(f) community outreach such as workshop, training, and website support. The goal of this contract effort is to provide a direct means of contract support between various NOAA entities and UCAR/NCAR. The work involved will foster a variety of research and development activities that align with the mission goals of both NOAA and UCAR/NCAR. UCAR/NCAR focuses on important atmospheric research problems that require major commitments of resources and a wide range of scientific talent over extended periods of time.

By housing scientific programs and providing a wide variety of research facilities, facilities support, and related services, UCAR serves the specialized needs of the university research community. The results or end products of this contract are expected to result in improvements in NOAA research and development, and advancements in operational environmental science efforts.

This will further the NOAA mission to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts, to improve the skill of NOAA’s operational forecast models, and to share that knowledge and information with others.