Geosciences Core Research: Atmospheric, Geospace, Earth and Ocean Sciences (GEO Core)

The National Science Foundation, through its Directorate for Geosciences, administers the Geosciences Core Research: Atmospheric, Geospace, Earth and Ocean Sciences program. The solicitation supports foundational research that advances the frontiers of knowledge across the geosciences through three major program areas: Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Ocean Sciences. NSF emphasizes both systematic advances based on prior scholarship and ambitious, potentially transformative research that can challenge prevailing paradigms, develop new theories or methods, create research tools or datasets, or open new lines of scientific inquiry. The program also encourages opportunities for early-career investigators and scientifically justified uses of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced computation, and automation. Supported projects may address Earth's atmosphere and near-Earth space environment, the structure and processes of Earth's interior and surface, and all fields of ocean science, including biological, chemical, physical, geological, and geophysical ocean research. Projects may be disciplinary or multidisciplinary and may use theory, observations, computation, field campaigns, and laboratory studies. Activities may include the development, deployment, and operation of instrumentation and computing resources for observations, field work, and laboratory research. Collaborations with industry, national laboratories, international partners, and public-sector organizations are permitted, and projects may leverage cyberinfrastructure or physical research infrastructure. NSF identifies peer-reviewed scholarship, publicly accessible research datasets, and new methods, tools, models, or instrumentation as measures of program success. NSF anticipates total program funding of 110000000 and estimates making approximately 200 to 350 awards, subject to the availability of funds. Awards may take the form of standard grants, continuing grants, or cooperative agreements. The solicitation does not specify an individual award minimum or maximum. NSF seeks proposals spanning a wide range of funding levels and project durations and encourages investigators to consider appropriate mechanisms described in the Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide for preliminary, time-sensitive, exploratory, or unusually ambitious work. Proposals requesting up to five years of support may be appropriate where longer awards would advance ambitious research and reduce administrative burden. Voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited, and the solicitation identifies no applicable indirect cost or other budgetary limitations. Eligible proposers are the categories of organizations identified in the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide, Chapter I.E. Unaffiliated individuals are specifically ineligible to submit proposals under this solicitation. There are no restrictions or limits on who may serve as principal investigator, the number of proposals an organization may submit, or the number of proposals a principal investigator or co-principal investigator may submit. NSF GEO particularly encourages submissions from institutions in Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research jurisdictions and from a broad range of organizations. Full proposals may be submitted through Research.gov or Grants.gov and must be prepared according to the applicable NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide or NSF Grants.gov Application Guide. Letters of intent and preliminary proposals are not required. Collaborative proposals submitted as separate submissions from multiple organizations must use Research.gov. Conditional supplementary requirements apply to certain projects. Proposals involving off-site work require a one-page Off-Site Safety Protocol. Projects requiring community research platforms must submit appropriate facility requests, and Academic Research Fleet vessel projects require the applicable Science and Marine Equipment request. Investigators must address applicable permits in the Project Description. The Data Management and Sharing Plan must explain how final datasets, metadata, derived products, relevant software or code, and physical samples will be placed in a long-lived, publicly accessible archive upon publication or within two years of collection, whichever occurs first, or justify limitations on compliance. NSF evaluates proposals using the National Science Board-approved Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria. Following an initial compliance check, proposals are reviewed by an NSF Program Officer and, in most cases, by three or more external experts through ad hoc review, panel review, or both. All else being equal after merit review, NSF may give preference to institutions with lower indirect cost rates. Award recipients are generally required to submit annual project reports and a public Project Outcomes Report, with data and sample management activities included in required reports and products indexed in the NSF Public Access Repository. Proposals are accepted anytime, with no fixed full-proposal closing date stated in the solicitation. The opportunity is therefore treated as continuously accepting applications rather than as a recurring deadline-based competition. The solicitation was posted August 17, 2026, and identifies no letter of intent, concept paper, pre-proposal, or other pre-application gating deadline. Program questions are directed to program-specific NSF GEO email addresses, including atmos@nsf.gov for Atmospheric Sciences, geospace@nsf.gov for Geospace Sciences, LET@nsf.gov for Life and Environments through Time, SPSE@nsf.gov for Structure and Physics of the Solid Earth, WaLCZ@nsf.gov for Water, Landscape, and Critical Zone processes, CESEV@nsf.gov for Chemical Evolution of Solid Earth and Volcanology, BioOCE@nsf.gov for Biological Oceanography, MGG@nsf.gov for Marine Geology and Geophysics, CO@nsf.gov for Chemical Oceanography, PhysO@nsf.gov for Physical Oceanography, S3P@nsf.gov for U.S. Sub-Seafloor Sampling, and OTIC@nsf.gov for Ocean Technology and Interdisciplinary Coordination. No specific award notification date or universal performance period is stated.

Emphasize Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts and clearly explain how the project advances foundational geoscience knowledge. NSF particularly values intellectually ambitious and potentially transformative research. Where AI, advanced computation, or automation is used, justify it scientifically rather than treating it as incidental. Clearly address required data, metadata, software, code, and sample archiving obligations and ensure conditional safety, facility, and permitting documentation is included when applicable.