Greetings,

We are excited to share this funding opportunity from the Schmidt Sciences Virtual Earth Systems Research Institute (VESRI) initiative.The VESRI Climate Modeling Challenge: Accelerating Development Cycles for Coupled Climate Models funding opportunity focuses on efficient and reproducible coupled model calibration, thereby advancing VESRI's core mission to make climate projections more realistic and useful for decision-making. More information about the award can be found in the synopsis and links below. For a full list of currently open opportunities that have been announced through our office, please visit our new Current Opportunities web page. As a reminder, our Research Development team is available to provide proposal development support to FAS ladder faculty.

Schmidt Sciences VESRI Climate Modeling Challenge: Accelerating Development Cycles for Coupled Climate Models Call for Expressions of Intent (EOIs) Phase I 

• OSP Deadline: Not applicable at EOI phase
• Sponsor EOI Deadline: September 11, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET
• Award Amount: Up to $2,000,000 per team for 24 months 
  Schmidt Sciences allows an indirect cost rate of 11.11% (framed as 10% of the total project cost in the request for EOIs). This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss this with your grants administrator before preparing an application.

 

Program Overview

Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institutes (VIs) are focused research networks that bring together top scientists across institutions and disciplines to tackle specific, high-impact problems. Each VI supports a limited number of multi-institutional, often international, projects, typically led by one primary institution with 2–3 core partners and a broader set of collaborators. These teams are selected to pursue timely opportunities where new approaches can significantly accelerate progress. VIs are designed to take on high-risk, high-reward challenges that can expand fundamental scientific knowledge and deliver meaningful benefits to society.

 

The Virtual Earth Systems Research Institute (VESRI), a Schmidt Sciences VI, seeks to drive large-scale, catalytic, and transformative impact in climate modeling. VESRI supports a portfolio of projects focused on improving the realism and credibility of climate models through enhanced mathematical methods and algorithms. Current climate model development cycles remain slow and resource-intensive, with improvements often requiring substantial time, engineering effort, and computational resources to implement, integrate, and recalibrate within Earth System Models (ESMs). This Climate Modeling Challenge is a new funding initiative, aimed at enhancing and accelerating coupled model development cycles, and focused on efficient, reproducible coupled model calibration as aligned with VESRI’s mission to make climate projections more realistic and useful for decision-making. Given the rapid emergence of machine learning (ML) in climate modeling applications, this funding initiative is open to a range of modeling approaches, including process-based, ML-based, and other models. 

 

Priority Areas

• The current call solicits Expressions of Intent (EOIs) for Phase I of the Climate Modeling Challenge. The focus of Phase I is to implement a workflow for systematic reproducible calibration in a coupled climate model (defined here as at minimum a three-dimensional atmosphere-ocean global climate model; see Glossary for details). During this phase teams will be asked to:
  • Demonstrate bias reduction through a scientifically relevant simulation (see Glossary for details)
  • Demonstrate stability through a pre-industrial control (piC) simulation over a minimum of 150 years (see Glossary for details)
• Phase II and potential subsequent phases will build on Phase I outcomes to be applied to climate simulations under external forcings in ESMs. Later-phase eligibility requires completion of Phase I milestones; teams that are not participating in Phase I may qualify for Phase II by demonstrating completion of Phase I deliverables.

Eligibility Criteria

• This call is open to a wide range of modeling approaches. All coupled climate model types (see Glossary for definition) are encouraged to apply.
• Teams should demonstrate the ability to work across disciplines and institutions, consistent with VESRI’s emphasis on team science, open data, sustainable software practices, and the translation of research advances into climate model improvement.
• Funding is open to teams from and/or collaborations across academic research groups, climate modeling centers, research institutions or other non-profit organizations, and collaborators with relevant expertise in climate modeling and related fields. 
  • For-profit institutions may participate as collaborating partners or potential subawardees of applicants, but will not be considered for a direct award from Schmidt Sciences.
• Projects that focus on the following are considered out of scope for the VESRI Modeling Challenge:
  
  • Short and mid-range forecasting (only climate timescales are in scope)
  • Methods that cannot be potentially translated across models or configurations (e.g., full Earth System Models (ESMs) or non-stationary climates)

EOI Materials for Phase I 

• EOI submissions must be grounded in each of the two target goals for Phase I of the Challenge: 
  • Goal 1: Implementing Model Updates. Demonstrate integration of model updates into coupled climate models.  
  • Goal 2: Implementing a Systematic Calibration Workflow. Implement a systematic workflow for coupled model calibration (including validation methodology), and demonstrate long-term stability of the updated calibrated coupled model through a pre-industrial control run of a minimum of 150 years. 
• EOIs may be a maximum of three (3) pages in length, single spaced, 10-point (or larger) font with one inch margins, and should concisely describe the Phase I plan and relevance to the Challenge goals, including the following sections: 
  • Project Narrative 
  • Research Plan 
  • Adoption and Reproducibility Plan
  • Project Team and Partnerships
  • Preliminary Budget: One to two sentences specifying major cost categories (personnel, software engineering, compute, coordination with modeling centers, etc.)
  • Citations: Vancouver-style, two pages maximum as a separate PDF document
  • Team information using the Team Member Template, to be included as a separate PDF document
• Applicants interested in connecting with potential collaborators for EOI submissions may complete the Teaming Support Form. This directory will be confidential and available only to participants who opt in by submitting their information to the form. 

Additional Information and Resources

 

 

 

 

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