Climate Science Funding Opportunities

Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program (HEGS)

The objective of the Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program is to support basic scientific research about the nature, causes, consequences, or evolution of the spatial dimensions of human behaviors, activities, and dynamics as well as their interactions with environmental and social processes across a range of scales. Contemporary geographical research encompasses diverse research traditions and methodologies. Recognizing the breadth of the field’s contributions to science, the HEGS Program welcomes proposals for empirically grounded, theoretically engaged, methodologically rigorous, and generalizable research that advances geographical and geospatial sciences. It is critical that research projects submitted to the HEGS Program illustrate how the proposed research questions engage human dimensions relevant and important to people and societies.

Deadline: Third Friday in January (annually); third Friday in August (annually)

Paleo Perspectives on Present and Projected Climate (P4CLIMATE)

The P4CLIMATE competition is a coordinated paleoclimate science initiative that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Divisions of Atmospheric and GeoSpace Sciences (AGS), Earth Sciences (EAR), Ocean Sciences (OCE), and Office of Polar Programs (OPP) in the Geosciences (GEO) Directorate. The annual P4CLIMATE competition supports the scientific objectives of the National Science Foundation by fostering interdisciplinary research and synthesis of climate data. The goal of the interdisciplinary P4CLIMATE solicitation is to utilize observational and modeling studies to provide paleo perspectives addressing the two research themes: 1) Past Regional and Seasonal Climate; and 2) Past Climate Forcing, Sensitivity, and Feedbacks. 
Deadline: October 20 (annually)

Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB)

The Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) Program supports the generation of extended time series of data to address important questions in evolutionary biology, ecology, and ecosystem science. Research areas include, but are not limited to, the effects of natural selection or other evolutionary processes on populations, communities, or ecosystems; the effects of interspecific interactions that vary over time and space; population or community dynamics for organisms that have extended life spans and long turnover times; feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes; pools of materials such as nutrients in soils that turn over at intermediate to longer time scales; and external forcing functions such as climatic cycles that operate over long return intervals.
Deadline: Full proposals accepted anytime

Division of Environmental Biology (DEB)

The Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) Program supports research and training on evolutionary and ecological processes acting at the level of populations, species, communities, and ecosystems. DEB encourages research that elucidates fundamental principles that identify and explain the unity and diversity of life and its interactions with the environment over space and time. Research may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative studies; synthesis activities; phylogenetic discovery projects; or theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or computational modeling. Proposals should be submitted to the core clusters (Ecosystem Science, Evolutionary Processes, Population and Community Ecology, and Systematics and Biodiversity Science). DEB also encourages interdisciplinary proposals that cross conceptual boundaries and integrate over levels of biological organization or across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Research addressing ecology and ecosystem science in the marine biome should be directed to the Biological Oceanography Program in the Division of Ocean Sciences; research addressing evolution and systematics in the marine biome should be directed to the Evolutionary Processes or Systematics and Biodiversity Science programs in DEB.
Deadline: Full proposals accepted anytime

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Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Energy & Environment Program

This program looks to achieve its mission by supporting research, training, networking, and dissemination efforts that shape the direction of scholarship by investigating under-explored questions that warrant further attention, advance collaborative and interdisciplinary research across the social and natural sciences, involve early career faculty and train the next generation of students, link research with practice, and partner with other funders to amplify programmatic impact. The predominant geographic focus is the United States. The goal of this program is to inform the societal transition toward low-carbon energy systems in the U.S. by investigating economic, environmental, technological, and distributional issues. Interested scholars should send a letter of inquiry of no more than two pages to energy@sloan.org.

Deadline: Letters of inquiry accepted anytime

Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund aims to stimulate the growth of new connections between scholars working in largely disconnected fields who might together change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. Over the next two years, the foundation will dedicate $1 million to supporting small, early-stage grants ($2,500 to $50,000) that work toward achieving this goal. The sponsor is primarily, but not exclusively, interested in activities that build connections between basic and early biomedical scientific approaches and ecological, environmental, geological, geographic, and planetary-scale thinking, as well as with population-focused fields, including epidemiology and public health, demography, economics, and urban planning. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis through July 2026. A review will be conducted quarterly. 

Deadline: July 24, 2025