INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE NOTICE: Please read this entire notice carefully as it constitutes the only notice that will be issued regarding the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) intent to contract by other than full and open competition in the special research study for the Effect of Particle Shape on the Aerosol Retrieval from ABI. NOAA intends to award a sole source contract to Texas A&M; University - Corpus Christi, TX. The anticipated contract will be a firm-fixed price level of effort contract and will include a base year plus one (1) one-year option period. The applicable North American Industry Classification code is 541712, size standard is 500 employees.
The work to be performed is to provide science support to the GOES-R AWG aerosol team in modeling the optical and radiative properties of nonspherical aerosol particles. The contract will utilize the services of Texas A& M University - Corpus Christi. The Texas A& M Research Foundation provides unique experience that is unavailable within NESDIS. Only they can provide the computations that we need. The foundation has a long collaboration with NOAA and its institutes. They have a team of scientist from NOAA, NASA and academia working on the cloud algorithms from GOES-R. They also have an expert in the area of light scattering by nonspherical particles (ice crystals, in particular). Over years, they have developed various state of the art light scattering computational models. The optical properties of ice crystals which their team has simulated have been of great utility to the atmospheric radiative transfer community. These simulations of the optical properties of ice crystals that have been used in the NASA MODIS operational ice cloud retrieval. Therefore the Texas A&M; University plays a critical role in our project which relies heavily on their expertise. Because of the Texas A&M; University's extensive experience in light scattering computation, radiative transfer simulation, and remote sensing, they are the only contractor appropriate for this project.
Additionally, it is not the Government's intention to enter into a contract based on this notice or otherwise pay for information solicited. This is not a Request for Proposal (RFP). This is a notice of intent to sole source only, and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the NOAA. NOAA will not accept unsolicited proposals in response to the subject of this request for capabilities statements. The Government will not be responsible for any cost incurred in responding to this notice.