WCSSP South Africa FY25/26 Grant Funding Opportunities

This open call is split into three (3) Lots. Bidders can submit a proposal for a single Lot or multiple Lots.

We invite bidders to propose grant activities to cover a 2 year 10 month (34 month) period. Funding will initially be available for a 10 month period (June 2025 – March 2026).  Subject to further funding allocations being received from DSIT, the Met Office will confirm extensions to the Grant Agreement on an annual basis to fund year 2 and year 3 activities.

Bids are invited for the following calls/lots;

2.4 - Advancing attribution methods and applications  

Attribution studies have gained in prominence over the past decade, providing quantitative estimates of how extreme weather and climate events have altered in their likelihood and/or magnitude due to anthropogenic climate change. However, there is a need to evaluate the wide range of approaches being used, to inform the strategic development of attribution science and modelling capabilities. There is also an increasing need to advance attribution services for societal applications, to provide rapid and reliable evidence for the emerging Loss & Damage mechanism under the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as well as informing adaptation and resilience measures at national and local scales. Efforts are underway globally (e.g., World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Working Group on Event Attribution) aiming to develop guidance on event attribution methods and interpretation, with researchers from the UK and South Africa playing key roles. However, more can be done to advance the field rapidly and promote collaboration between Global North and South partners. Aligned with international activities, this call is seeking a project to produce recommendations for the application of different attribution methods and modelling systems, identifying how individually or collectively different methodologies can be best employed to meet the needs of users in different contexts. The project should explore and compare the main attribution methodologies, including both probability-based approaches that use large ensembles (typically from lower resolution GCM simulations), and mechanistic extreme event approaches which strive to simulate the actual weather systems (using higher resolution regional simulations). Ideally the project would also include emerging and future capabilities in either (or both): 

1. Development and evaluation of machine learning (ML) approaches to attribution, aligned with the new Met Office AI for Climate initiative.  

2. Impacts attribution, focusing on the changing nature of impacts from damaging weather and climate events, and the extent to which these impacts can be attributed to climate change.  

The project should be informed by emerging drivers and needs for attribution science and services, particularly in South Africa but potentially also more widely, with a focus on Global South (global majority) countries. It expected that project teams work alongside the Met Office and South African partners to inform the development of attribution science and services. Research will be able to build on the outcomes of a current Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme “bridging science” project conducting a high-level evaluation of attribution methods. The project will also be able to leverage ensemble datasets across weather and climate timescales available from the Met Office and the University of Witwatersrand (WCSSP partners); bidders should make clear which datasets they intend to use, and any existing model datasets will be opened to the successful bidder under standard licence terms. 

3.7 - Water modelling for assessing climate change-induced impacts of drought on water security in South Africa  

According to the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, roughly half of the world’s population are estimated to experience severe water scarcity for some part of the year, every year (Caretta, et al., 2022). Extreme droughts have become more intense, lasting longer and are having a greater impact on human populations. There is high confidence that, in many parts of the world, anthropogenic climate change has contributed to the increased likelihood and severity of both agricultural and hydrological droughts.  

South Africa is on the front line of changing patterns of global water scarcity, with drought being identified as the greatest threat to sustainable development in Southern Africa in the next 15 years (Engelbrecht and Monteiro, 2021). This is exemplified by the prolonged drought in the Western Cape region between 2015 – 2020, which led to dangerously low levels in the dams that supply Cape Town, with the city’s dams becoming dangerously close to not being able to supply water to the population in 2017 and 2018. Climate change is projected to increase the intensity of meteorological drought (Engelbrecht et al., 2024), however the consequences of this are less frequently studied due to the lack of modelling tools and the availability of high spatial resolution climate projections.  

The aim of this project is to build on existing modelling approaches in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), for the assessment of the impacts of climate change on water availability from reservoirs in South Africa. In building on an existing soil-vegetation-hydrology model such as JULES, this project will lay the foundation for being able to answer critical policy-relevant questions such as whether land or water management practices may be sufficient to reduce the impact of future droughts. It will work in collaboration with South African colleagues at WCSSP partner institutes, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and University of Witwatersrand to develop a modelling approach at spatial and temporal resolutions that are relevant to studying the impacts of climate change. This will involve flexibility to create simulations using a) Inter-Sectoral Impacts Model Inter-comparison Project (ISIMIP) driving data at 0.5 degree spatial resolution, and b) km-scale datasets driving from convection-permitting models. Access will be provided to these datasets via the JASMIN data analysis facility. 

4.6 - Informing context-specific needs for impact-based early warning systems  

Given the increase in development of early warning services in response to the 5-year United Nations Early Warnings 4 All (EW4All) initiative, it is timely to undertake a deep dive into the context-specific needs from impact-based early warning systems (EWS). Such work will support the burgeoning Extreme Climate Events Research Alliance (ECERA) community of practice in South Africa, and the internationally focused World Weather Research Programme PEOPLE (Progressing EW4All Oriented to Partnerships and Local Engagement) project. 

The needs for impacts-based EWS in South Africa will not be the same across all communities. Differences in need arise because of a) differences in geography and weather drivers, meaning that different regions face potentially different types of extreme weather events as well as the potential for compound events (e.g. extreme rainfall together with storm surges), b) differences in predominant economic activity such as agriculture, coastal and marine activities, transport etc (see the priority sectors in the NFCS) as well as cross-sectoral activities, and; c) differences in socio-economic context, such as urban vs rural dwellers and formal vs informal housing dwellers. 

This call is seeking a new project that will identify and critically examine context-specific requirements from impacts-based EWS, across a selection of diverse case study regions and communities in South Africa, considering different sectors (particularly WCSSP South Africa focus sectors – agriculture, energy, health, and marine). The objective is to undertake community-based needs assessments to a) understand and document the predominant climate hazards and risks where early warnings will support actions in those communities, b) investigate and document the most effective dissemination techniques and technologies (including non-technological options) for impact-based EWS, and c) document the current challenges (and, therefore, priority needs) of the EWS providers in meeting these context-specific requirements for development and dissemination of EWS. In doing so, evidence will help inform new investments in impact-based EWS. 

The project should forge strong connections and input from those working on impacts-based early warning initiatives in South Africa, including, for example, the South Africa Weather Service (SAWS), the National Disaster Management Centre, the Alliance for Collaboration on Climate and Earth System Science (ACCESS at CSIR) and the World Weather Research Programme PEOPLE Project. Focus should be placed on sustainability, including how community capacity can be built to facilitate effective dissemination and action. Project teams should have experience of engaging in communities (ideally in South Africa or Global South contexts) and be designed to facilitate joint ownership of research evidence and solutions. The project is required to be undertaken in an ethically responsible manner, adhering to research ethics protocols and ensuring that the results of the research are made clear to participants, showing demonstrable benefit from their input into the project. 

For further information please visit the project website – WCSSP South Africa - Met Office