General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

5. Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

• Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

Beneficiaries will be subject to the following additional obligations regarding open science practices: Open access to any new modules, models or tools developed from scratch or substantially improved with the use of EU funding under the action must be ensured through documentation, availability of model code and input data developed under the action.

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)

Standard application form (HE CSA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)

Standard evaluation form (HE CSA)

MGA

HE General MGA v1.0

Lump Sum MGA v1.0

Call-specific instructions

Information on clinical studies (HE)

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 8. Climate, Energy and Mobility

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

The projects funded under this topic will assess climate variability building on past climate and environmental datasets.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Better process understanding of past climate changes, their variability and interactions with ecosystems, leading to improved Earth system models based on paleoclimate data.
• Assessment of driving and feedback mechanisms (e.g., the carbon cycle evolution and water cycle process), and precise timing and dynamics of deglaciation and glaciation.
• Future climate change scenarios produced in light of documented past changes in climate and ice sheets, in particular warm climates/high sea-level situations, and abrupt transitions.
• Strengthened Earth system models integrating paleoclimate data, e.g. models of ice sheet, ocean, ecosystem and atmospheric components, enabling understanding of future climate.
• Identification of thresholds in Earth system components, including the biosphere, and feedbacks that may be responsible for non-linear behaviour of the climate system to certain forcings.
• Development, review, and improvement of indicators of abrupt changes, or early warning signals, and tipping points within paleoclimate records.
• Synthesis of climate variations that will serve as fundamental bases for IPCC future assessment and benchmarks for model inter-comparisons.

The geological and ice-core records provide long-term information on the conditions and processes that can drive physical, ecological, and social systems during interglacial periods, deglaciations and abrupt climatic events. The challenge of the research under this topic is to test Earth system models over selected past climate scenarios, outside the range of variability recorded over the past centuries.

This challenge will be tackled through the following activities:

• Producing and aggregating in databases high-resolution, well-dated, interoperable paleoclimatic records on climate changes from the past (e.g., temperature, GHG concentrations, sea level, ocean circulation variability, seasonality, and precipitation).
• Using paleo-archives at high resolution to extend the instrumental time series for better understating of the proxy records and for improved quantification of their uncertainties.
• Development of Earth system models with outputs that allow a more direct comparison to paleo-data, modelling climate variability, thresholds, and impacts across timescales from years to millennia (e.g., isotope-enabled general circulation models with dynamic ice sheet components that represent relevant feedbacks).
• Describing short- to long-term climate evolution using quantitative reconstructions from different proxies of past climate periods that are of particular relevance with respect to the current climate change scenario.
• Identification of climate tipping points, cascading effects, and environmental limits using paleo data and model experiments.
• Comparing changes in marine, terrestrial and glacier settings to evaluate ocean–land–cryosphere interactions.
• Documenting and quantifying the natural climate variability, in terms of amplitude, time (onset, duration, frequency) and space (location, extension).
• Allowing for consistent integration of large-scale and more regional/local factors to be reproduced by climate models using natural forcings.

Synergies with projects resulting from the topic HORIZON-CL5-2023-D1-01-02: Climate-related tipping points should be established.

The projects should rely on paleoclimatic data from scientific drilling campaigns, and other appropriate sources.

When dealing with models, actions should promote the highest standards of transparency and openness, as much as possible going well beyond documentation and extending to aspects such as assumptions, code and data that is managed in compliance with the FAIR principles[1]. In addition, full openness of any new modules, models or tools developed from scratch or substantially improved with the use of EU funding is expected.

[1] FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).