About the Program
The NOAA Climate and Global Change (C&GC) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program aims to help create and train the next generation of leading researchers needed for climate studies, to serve the Nation and support NOAA’s mission. Sponsored by NOAA Research’s Climate Program Office (CPO) and founded in 1990 by former CPO Director Dr. J. Michael Hall, the C&GC Program appoints fellows who are hosted by a mentoring scientist at a U.S. university or research institution to work in an area of mutual interest.
The fellows focus on observing, understanding, modeling, and predicting climate variability and change on seasonal and longer timescales. This includes the documentation and analysis of past, current, or possible future climate variability and change as well as the study of the underlying physical, chemical, and biological processes.
Over the past 30 years, the Fellowship Program has hosted more than 230 C&GC Fellows and has developed an outstanding reputation of attracting the best and the brightest PhDs in the sciences relevant to CPO’s mission. The program was originally created in response to a lack of trained specialists in a burgeoning NOAA research area, and since has continued investing in the climate and global change workforce.
When I interviewed for the job I eventually accepted... I was introduced as having "the most prestigious fellowship in our field." I feel that the fellowship was instrumental in my getting shortlisted and interviews at several institutions and allowed me to travel a lot during my postdoctoral tenure to meet other researchers.
Former C&GC Postdoc Fellow on how the fellowship enabled career success.
The program traditionally also supports a NOAA Summer Institute every other year in July in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, as well as an annual alumni luncheon at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in December. These events help build a stronger global climate change community by introducing the postdoctoral fellows, who are hosted at research institutions throughout the U.S., to each other and to more senior scientists.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s (UCAR) Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS) manages the C&GC Program on behalf of CPO. Appointed fellows are UCAR employees. They receive a fixed annual salary plus UCAR's employment benefits.
View the recent External Review Report of the NOAA C&GC Postdoc Fellowship Program (February 2019).
Check out the CPAESS C&GC webpage to learn more about the program, how to apply to be a Postdoc Fellow or to host a fellow, see the C&GC current awardees and alumni database, and more.