I have problems to verify your calculations with Macaulay 2, concretely the fiber over $t = 0$ (resp. $a=0$ as its called by me). I used the description given at the OP for the ideal $\mathcal{I}$ and computed it as id1 by elimination. With the map phi I set $a=0$ and got the ideal id11 in S2=QQ[w_0..w_4]. This is the homogeneous coordinate ring of the $\mathbb{P}^4_{QQ}$ which is the fiber of $\mathbb{P}^4_{QQ[a]}$ over $a=0$. Calculating cohomology in $\mathbb{P}^4_{QQ}$ I get all cohomologies zero for id11. I would be very happy if someone could reconcile my calculation with the results above and find a possible mistake that I have made. A=QQ[a,Degrees=>{1:{}}]; S=A[x_0..x_4]; T=A[t,u]; phi = map(T,S, {t^4, t^3*u, a* t^2 * u^2, t * u^3, u^4}); id1 = ker phi; 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ideal (x x - x x , - x x + a*x x , a*x - x x , - x x + a*x x , a*x - x x , x - x x , x x - x x , x - x x , - x + a x x , - x x + a*x x , - x x + a*x x ) 1 3 0 4 2 3 1 4 3 2 4 1 2 0 3 1 0 2 3 1 4 0 3 1 4 1 0 3 2 0 4 2 3 0 4 1 2 0 4 S2=QQ[w_0..w_4] phi=map(S2,S,{w_0,w_1,w_2,w_3,w_4}) id11 = phi(id1) 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 ideal (w w - w w , -w w , -w w , -w w , -w w , w - w w , w w - w w , w - w w , -w , -w w , -w w ) 1 3 0 4 2 3 2 4 1 2 0 2 3 1 4 0 3 1 4 1 0 3 2 2 3 1 2 i73 : for i from 0 to 4 list prune HH^i(sheaf module id11) o73 = {0, 0, 0, 0, 0} o73 : List i74 : for i from 0 to 4 list prune HH^i(sheaf S2^1/id11) 1 o74 = {QQ , 0, 0, 0, 0} o74 : List