Seed Grants

The CPEP Seed Grants support new and innovative directions in climate-related research, that further the mission of CCR to investigate the fundamental operations of the climate system and better understand the impacts and opportunities posed by climate change to economic, societal, and environmental systems.

2024 Seed Grants

Mapping the Unseen: Identifying Seasonal Inundation Patterns in Unexpected Wetland Methane Hotspots

  • Professor Min Chen

Prospects and Limitations of Predicting a Collapse of the AMOC

  • Professor Till Wagner & Professor Liz Maroon

Testing for Ancient DNA Preservation in a Full-Glacial Lake-Sediment Record Adjacent to the Green Bay and Lake Michigan Ice Lobes

  • Professor Jack Williams & Professor Luke Zoe

2019 Seed Grants

Characterizing and Modeling Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Hazards Using the Extreme Rainfall Multiplier

  • Daniel Wright, Assistant Professor

Capacity Building for a Wisconsin Climate Education Program

  • Rose Pertzborn, Outreach Program Manager & Michael Notaro, Senior Scientist

Documenting the University of Wisconsin Probabilistic Downscaling (UWPD) Dataset

  • Dave Lorenz, Associate Scientist

Toward Resolving the Holocene Climate Conundrum: A Global Data-Model Evaluation and Synthesis

  • Shaun Marcott, Assistant Professor & Feng He, Associate Scientist

2018 Seed Grants

Assessing marine Ice Sheet Instability in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with MPAS-Land-Ice Model

  • Feng He, Associate Scientist

Mechanisms and Environmental Regulators of the Cross-Equatorial Impacts of East Asian Cold Air Outbreaks on the Indo-Australian Summer Monsoon

  • Michael Notaro, Senior Scientist

Investigating the Causal Linkage Between the Arctic Amplification and the Mid-Latitudes Extreme Events: Setting up a Data-Driven Machine Learning System

  • Fuyao Wang, Assistant Researcher

2017 Seed Grants

Characterizing Arctic Sea Ice Properties Using APP-X Data and CESM-LE Based Coupled Data Assimilation System

  • Shu Wu, Assistant Researcher

Evaluation of Biases Related to Snow Processes: In Reanalyses and Climate Models, Globally on Mountainous Regions

  • Anne Sophie Daloz, Assistant Researcher

Integrating Hydrologic and Economic Models to Manage Depleting Water in Central Sands Wisconsin

  • Ankur Desai, Professor

Automated Image Analysis and Machine Learning Techniques to Transform Data Collection for Climate History

  • Sara Hotchkiss, Professor

2016 Seed Grants

Index Insurance as a Climate Risk Management Tool

  • Paul Block, Assistant Professor

Onset and retreat of glacial permafrost at Cave of the Mounds, WI

  • Ian Orland

Explore the Impact of Assimilating Ocean Salinity Data on Climate Simulation in a Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Data Assimilation System

  • Shu Wu

Improving Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction of Flash Droughts over the Central U.S. Through Understanding Land-Air Interactions

  • Yafang Zhong

2015 Seed Grants

Does northern hemisphere snow cover influence mid-latitude cyclone trajectories? Weather system implications for a changing climate.

  • Ankur Desai, Professor

Exploring Paleo Climate Data Assimilation of Water Isotopes

  • Zhengyu Liu

Regional pCO2 distribution in CMIP5: Connections to ocean circulation?

  • Galen McKinley, Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

High-resolution simulation of precipitation (WRF, 2 km)

  • Tristan L’Ecuyer

Paleo-Proxy in the North Atlantic Ocean During the Last Glacial Period

  • Shaun Marcott

2014 Seed Grants

Biogeochemical impacts of mussel invasions

  • Galen McKinley, Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Integrated index to characterize extreme events

  • Steve Vavrus, Senior Scientist

Middle Eastern Dust Storm Variability

  • Michael Notaro, CCR Associate Director, Senior Scientist

Biogeochemical impacts of Asian dust flux to Hawaiian Forests and Agroecosystems

  • Sara Hotchkiss, Botany Professor

2013 Seed Grants

The impacts of changing winter conditions on trailing edge species in Wisconsin

  • Ben Zuckerberg, Assistant Professor, Forest and Wildlife Ecology
  • Michael Notaro, CCR Associate Director, Senior Scientist

Helping science teachers be better judges of climate science credibility

  • Noah Feinstein, Assistant Professor

Developing an integrated index to characterize extreme weather

  • Steve Vavrus, Senior Scientist

Battling impacts of mussel invasion and climate change on Lake Michigan physics

  • Val Bennington, Honorary Associate, Fellow

Understanding the climate variability of global monsoons through improving interpretation of cave speleothem δ18O records

  • Guangshan Chen, Assistant Scientist

2012 Seed Grants

Implications of a Warming Winter on Resident Bird Populations in the Upper Midwest

  • Ben Zuckerberg, Assistant Professor, Forest and Wildlife Ecology

What are the biogeochemical consequences of declining ice cover and increasing land use for lakes?

  • Ankur Desai, Professor

Can the model to predict the future changes of hydrological cycle reproduce its past?

  • Feng He, CCR Assistant Scientist Professor

Monitoring the Ecological Sensitivity of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Droughts

  • Michael Notaro, CCR Associate Director, Senior Scientist