Joint Transnational Call on Next Generation Climate Science in Europe for Oceans

ANR joins the Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs) Climate and Oceans to launch a call for proposals to fund transnational research proposals on the Next Generation of Climate Science in Europe for Oceans. Funding organisations from 9 countries are joining this call co-funded by the following countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland#, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Portugal.

# Participation pending final decision (please consult the JPI Climate and JPI Oceans websites for an updated list of participating countries)

Europe already makes substantial contributions at a national level to the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Climate Research Programme. However, addressing the grand challenges of climate science requires stronger and immediate transnational action to strengthen climate knowledge and enable informed societal transformation to mitigate and adapt to climate change.  This Joint Call proposes to focus on oceans and climate, using observations and Earth system models in order to address the following topics:

• Strengthening our understanding of climate variability and extremes resulting from the interactions with the oceans such as extratropical and tropical cyclones, and how they are affected by climate change on a range of time scales.
• Improving the representation of air-sea interactions, physical and biogeochemical ocean processes in Earth System Models to better represent small-scale non-linear processes as well as water, energy and carbon cycles. Model-data analyses using innovative approaches will be welcome.
• Improving estimates of climate change induced modifications of ocean physics and ocean chemistry, associated with biogeochemical cycles, including ocean acidification and carbon sequestration.

This joint call between JPI Climate and JPI Oceans proposes to mobilize funding organizations for transnational added values on climate sciences with a special focus on oceans and climate interac-tions. Only a strong collaboration and cohesion between the countries will lead to European leader-ship in the next IPCC assessments and science contribution required by UNFCCC, which will then trigger a new wave of Climate Services innovation for next decade. Therefore, this joint call aims at funding at most two major projects for each theme encompassing as much as possible all countries participating to the call. Focusing on oceans will shed new light on the stressors impacting on marine life and consequently on marine bio-economy. The joint call will also help inform adaptation policy by bringing key knowledge to increase resilience and adaptation measures for vulnerable areas, especially in coastal and low island areas.

Scientific teams are invited to form transnational consortia comprising research groups from at least three countries participating in the call.

An overall budget of ca. €8,1M has been provisionally reserved. ANR confirmed its contribution to the call for a maximum amount of €2 M.

Proposals will be evaluated according to criteria of scientific excellence, (policy relevance and societal impact (which includes stakeholder engagement), and quality and efficiency of the project implementation.