Global climate change and coastal landscape evolution in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred in southern Australia during a geologically recent time interval termed the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.2 million to 700 thousand years ago) and an interglacial period some 400,000 years ago. Using innovative geochronological, geochemical and modelling techniques, the environmental changes that shaped modern Australian coastal landscapes, in ....Global climate change and coastal landscape evolution in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred in southern Australia during a geologically recent time interval termed the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.2 million to 700 thousand years ago) and an interglacial period some 400,000 years ago. Using innovative geochronological, geochemical and modelling techniques, the environmental changes that shaped modern Australian coastal landscapes, including the intensification of aridity and their timing will be examined. The project will yield new knowledge about the sensitivity of landscapes to current and ongoing environmental changes and derive explanatory models of the rates and characteristics of landscape response to assist future coastal environmental management.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100141
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$420,000.00
Summary
High-resolution ITRAX XRF core scanning facility for global change research. This facility will enable researchers to obtain high-resolution geochemical profiles in the study of environmental change and climate variability. It will provide archive data on the variation of density and chemical element composition along sediment and soil cores, rock cores, wood samples, speleothems and corals. These archives contain important information such as human activity, climate variability, water quality c ....High-resolution ITRAX XRF core scanning facility for global change research. This facility will enable researchers to obtain high-resolution geochemical profiles in the study of environmental change and climate variability. It will provide archive data on the variation of density and chemical element composition along sediment and soil cores, rock cores, wood samples, speleothems and corals. These archives contain important information such as human activity, climate variability, water quality changes, pollution histories, recent geomorphological change, land-use change, introduction of invasive species and the occurrence of bushfires. A better understanding of the occurrence and timing of these major environmental issues is of national and regional importance.Read moreRead less
El Niño in a changing climate: novel long-term perspectives from Pacific corals and model simulations. El Niño and La Niña events have a profound influence on Australian drought conditions and rainfall. Forecasting is hampered by short climate records, which do not capture the full range of El Niño dynamics. This project aims to generate records of unprecedented length and spatial coverage from key sites across the western and central equatorial Pacific. Five hundred years of continuous, monthly ....El Niño in a changing climate: novel long-term perspectives from Pacific corals and model simulations. El Niño and La Niña events have a profound influence on Australian drought conditions and rainfall. Forecasting is hampered by short climate records, which do not capture the full range of El Niño dynamics. This project aims to generate records of unprecedented length and spatial coverage from key sites across the western and central equatorial Pacific. Five hundred years of continuous, monthly-resolution climate data will be integrated with output from state-of-the-art climate model simulations to distil the key processes that cause El Niño to vary. This project aims to provide major advances in determining the full range of El Niño and La Niña behaviour, leading to improved forecasts of future changes, with consequences for Australia's water security.Read moreRead less
Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development - Grant ID: DI110100019
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$199,742.00
Summary
Tracking the response of the Australian climate to abrupt climate change. This project will use cutting-edge climate proxy analyses to reconstruct the response of the Australian climate system to global climate change over the last 2,000 years. The results will provide significant insight in to how future global climate change will impact on social, biological and physical systems in Australia.
Australia's variable rainfall - how dry or wet can it really get? Australia’s rainfall is extremely variable, which means existing weather records are too short to calculate the true risk posed by droughts and floods. This project aims to quantify how naturally variable the rainfall coming from the Indo-Pacific mid-latitudes is, allowing recent rainfall extremes and future projections to be assessed in a long-term context. This project expects to produce new estimates of atmospheric moisture bud ....Australia's variable rainfall - how dry or wet can it really get? Australia’s rainfall is extremely variable, which means existing weather records are too short to calculate the true risk posed by droughts and floods. This project aims to quantify how naturally variable the rainfall coming from the Indo-Pacific mid-latitudes is, allowing recent rainfall extremes and future projections to be assessed in a long-term context. This project expects to produce new estimates of atmospheric moisture budgets between Australia and Antarctica based on a novel, 1000-year length reconstruction of moisture-bearing southern Indian Ocean storms. This new information is critically needed by water managers so that they can properly calculate (and ultimately prepare for) the worst of Australia’s rainfall-related risks.Read moreRead less
Unlocking the environmental archives of the Kimberley’s past. This project aims to reconstruct the environmental history of Australia’s Kimberley region spanning the past 60,000 years. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the project will provide new understanding of the causes of environmental change and impacts on this region since the arrival of Australia’s earliest inhabitants. This will inform the development of conservation policy to ensure preservation of the region's globally significan ....Unlocking the environmental archives of the Kimberley’s past. This project aims to reconstruct the environmental history of Australia’s Kimberley region spanning the past 60,000 years. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the project will provide new understanding of the causes of environmental change and impacts on this region since the arrival of Australia’s earliest inhabitants. This will inform the development of conservation policy to ensure preservation of the region's globally significant rock art against environmental change and economic development.
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Equator to Pole: Reconstructing tropical and Antarctic climate variability over the last millennium and their impacts on southern Australian rainfall. Water resource management is one of the greatest challenges facing sustainable agriculture and urban populations across southern Australia. Key players driving catastrophic droughts in southern Australia are the tropical Indian Ocean Dipole and polar Southern Annual Mode climate systems, which affect moisture availability and transport pathways. T ....Equator to Pole: Reconstructing tropical and Antarctic climate variability over the last millennium and their impacts on southern Australian rainfall. Water resource management is one of the greatest challenges facing sustainable agriculture and urban populations across southern Australia. Key players driving catastrophic droughts in southern Australia are the tropical Indian Ocean Dipole and polar Southern Annual Mode climate systems, which affect moisture availability and transport pathways. This collaborative research project draws together a uniquely-skilled research team to develop targeted coral, ice and cave reconstructions of these climate systems and their impacts on Australian rainfall through the last millennium. This fundamental new knowledge of the drivers of Australian rainfall variability will aid improved predictability of future changes in our valuable water resources. Read moreRead less
Exploring past climates, volcanic disasters and earthquakes in Australasia. This project aims to combine cutting-edge geochemical microanalysis of precisely dated cave deposits and corals to generate fundamental knowledge of Australasian earth hazards and environmental turning points over the past 500,000 years. These novel long-term perspectives of society’s most challenging environmental threats will provide the scientific basis required for informed decision-making and sustainable development ....Exploring past climates, volcanic disasters and earthquakes in Australasia. This project aims to combine cutting-edge geochemical microanalysis of precisely dated cave deposits and corals to generate fundamental knowledge of Australasian earth hazards and environmental turning points over the past 500,000 years. These novel long-term perspectives of society’s most challenging environmental threats will provide the scientific basis required for informed decision-making and sustainable development in Australasia.Read moreRead less
Back to the Future: Interglacial Warming and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet . The Antarctic is highly-sensitive to abrupt changes caused by the passing of tipping points within the climate system. Crucially, the instrumental record is too short to resolve major uncertainties surrounding future warming. The Last Interglacial (125,000 yrs ago) was 2°C warmer than today and experienced 6-11 m higher global sea levels. The role of Antarctica is vital for constraining sea-level projections. This Austra ....Back to the Future: Interglacial Warming and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet . The Antarctic is highly-sensitive to abrupt changes caused by the passing of tipping points within the climate system. Crucially, the instrumental record is too short to resolve major uncertainties surrounding future warming. The Last Interglacial (125,000 yrs ago) was 2°C warmer than today and experienced 6-11 m higher global sea levels. The role of Antarctica is vital for constraining sea-level projections. This Australian-led international project aims to determine the mechanisms and impacts of past interglacial Antarctic warming up to 2°C (relative to pre-industrial). Innovative techniques integrating horizontal ice cores and high resolution marine records will help identify polar tipping points and better plan for impacts in Australia.Read moreRead less