NORMAN, Oklahoma – The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration announced it selected the University of Oklahoma to host NOAA’s new Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CISHIWRO).

The selection comes with an award of up to $208 million over five years, with the potential for renewal for another five years based on successful performance.

“It is an extraordinary honor for the university to be selected to lead the new Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations,” said OU President Joseph Harroz, Jr.

The mission of CISHIWRO is to conduct research to improve the understanding of severe and high impact weather in collaboration with NOAA. OU leads the cooperative institute with new partner institutions Howard University, The Pennsylvania State University, Texas Tech University and University of Albany. The institute will also collaborate with the NOAA Cooperative Science Center in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M), in addition to others.

The award reaffirms NOAA and OU’s 43 years of collaboration and increases funding by $66 million to extend the work of NOAA’s previous cooperative institute at OU.

“The acronym CISHIWRO better represents the breadth of research, the transition of research to operational products and the cooperative institute,” said Greg McFarquhar, director of the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS), NOAA’s previous cooperative institute hosted by OU.

CISHIWRO will continue to address some of NOAA’s major research themes, in addition to new research areas. The five research themes include: weather radar and observations research and development, mesoscale and stormscale modeling research and development, forecast applications improvements research and development, subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) prediction for extreme weather events, and social and socioeconomic impacts of high impact weather systems.

“This award reaffirms the University of Oklahoma as a leader in atmospheric science and meteorological research,” said Tomás Díaz de la Rubia OU vice president for research and partnerships. “We are thrilled to expand our capacity to generate real-world solutions to the global grand challenges of weather and climate.”