Risks of rapid ocean warming at the Antarctic continental margin. This project aims to comprehensively understand the interconnected processes by which oceanic heat is circulated towards Antarctica. The risk of rapid ocean warming at the Antarctic margin is profound, with change already detected via deep ocean warming, land-ice melt, and ice shelf collapse. Yet this region remains poorly understood, with only limited observations due to both a harsh environment and a lack of standard data stream ....Risks of rapid ocean warming at the Antarctic continental margin. This project aims to comprehensively understand the interconnected processes by which oceanic heat is circulated towards Antarctica. The risk of rapid ocean warming at the Antarctic margin is profound, with change already detected via deep ocean warming, land-ice melt, and ice shelf collapse. Yet this region remains poorly understood, with only limited observations due to both a harsh environment and a lack of standard data streams. This project will use high-resolution global and regional ocean/sea-ice models to examine mechanisms for rapid warming of Antarctic continental shelf waters via both large-scale drivers and fine-scale processes, including mesoscale eddies, tide-topography interactions, and bottom boundary flows. This work will better constrain future rates of ice melt around Antarctica by providing vital knowledge of the ocean processes, dynamics, and feedbacks relating to warm water intrusion onto the Antarctic continental shelf.Read moreRead less
The Antarctic Slope Current in a warming climate. Melting Antarctic ice sheets are responsible for 28% of global sea level rise in recent decades, and can contribute more than 1 metre of sea level rise by year 2100, and a staggering 15 metres by 2500. Increased glacial melt rates are best understood by studying changes in the circulation of water around the Antarctic coastline. The combination of physical processes that must be resolved in this region places a high demand on ocean observations a ....The Antarctic Slope Current in a warming climate. Melting Antarctic ice sheets are responsible for 28% of global sea level rise in recent decades, and can contribute more than 1 metre of sea level rise by year 2100, and a staggering 15 metres by 2500. Increased glacial melt rates are best understood by studying changes in the circulation of water around the Antarctic coastline. The combination of physical processes that must be resolved in this region places a high demand on ocean observations and modelling systems. This project uses a series of high-resolution ocean and ice experiments, cross-validated with observations, to provide a deeper understanding of how waters at the Antarctic margin respond to both anthropogenic and natural climate forcing.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE210100028
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,000,000.00
Summary
Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. This proposal is for an 18-month membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), the world’s largest collaborative research program in Earth and Ocean sciences. The Program studies the history and current activity of the Earth by conducting seagoing coring expeditions and monitoring of instrumented boreholes, using globally unique infrastructure that Australians would otherwise have no access to. Program outcomes ....Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. This proposal is for an 18-month membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), the world’s largest collaborative research program in Earth and Ocean sciences. The Program studies the history and current activity of the Earth by conducting seagoing coring expeditions and monitoring of instrumented boreholes, using globally unique infrastructure that Australians would otherwise have no access to. Program outcomes include understanding past global environmental change on multiple time scales, the deep biosphere, plate tectonics, formation and distribution of resources, and generation of hazards. These outcomes are paramount to Australia’s national science and research priorities, and societal and economic prosperity.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE160100067
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$10,000,000.00
Summary
Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program:
This project is for a 5-year membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program, the world’s largest collaborative research program in earth and ocean sciences addressing international priorities. The program conducts seagoing coring expeditions and monitoring of instrumented boreholes to study the history and current activity of the Earth, recorded in sed ....Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program:
This project is for a 5-year membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program, the world’s largest collaborative research program in earth and ocean sciences addressing international priorities. The program conducts seagoing coring expeditions and monitoring of instrumented boreholes to study the history and current activity of the Earth, recorded in sediments and rocks below the seafloor. The program’s aims include understanding past global environments on multiple time scales, the deep biosphere, plate tectonics, occurrence and distribution of resources, and generation of hazards. Several multinational expeditions are scheduled and planned in our marine jurisdiction and within the Australasian region. Read moreRead less
The last glaciation maximum climate conundrum and environmental responses of the Australian continent to altered climate states. This project will show how climate systems in south east Australia responded to large scale global change the last time this happened, which was about 21,000 years ago. By determining the climate response in Australia to this change, this project will help predict future response in rainfall and temperature to human-induced and natural climate change.
Earthquake biases in measurements of Antarctica's sea-level contribution. This project aims to accurately determine Antarctica’s contribution to present-day sea-level. Large technique-specific systematic errors make this uncertain and controversial with the sign of change not agreed. Three of four measurement techniques rely on knowing the solid earth's changing shape or gravity field. Studies have not considered post-seismic deformation, but GPS data show that Antarctica has deformed since the ....Earthquake biases in measurements of Antarctica's sea-level contribution. This project aims to accurately determine Antarctica’s contribution to present-day sea-level. Large technique-specific systematic errors make this uncertain and controversial with the sign of change not agreed. Three of four measurement techniques rely on knowing the solid earth's changing shape or gravity field. Studies have not considered post-seismic deformation, but GPS data show that Antarctica has deformed since the 1998 Magnitude-8.2 Antarctic Plate Earthquake. This project will develop a model of these earthquakes constrained by geodetic data and use the model to estimate Antarctica's contribution to sea-level change. This should enable more confident local, national and international planning. This will benefit society through reducing the sea-level projection uncertainty.Read moreRead less
Quantifying sea-level trends and extremes along Australia's coastal margin. Multi-decadal changes in sea-level, and sea-level extremes, cannot be well quantified along most global coastlines, including Australia's, because the high spatial variability of sea-level is under-sampled by the sparse set of long, high quality tide gauge records. Satellite altimetry provides an alternative data source with greater spatial sampling, yet experiences contamination from land within tens of kilometres from ....Quantifying sea-level trends and extremes along Australia's coastal margin. Multi-decadal changes in sea-level, and sea-level extremes, cannot be well quantified along most global coastlines, including Australia's, because the high spatial variability of sea-level is under-sampled by the sparse set of long, high quality tide gauge records. Satellite altimetry provides an alternative data source with greater spatial sampling, yet experiences contamination from land within tens of kilometres from the coast and also suffers from regionally correlated biases. This project proposes to address these problems through re-tracking radar altimetry waveforms to derive new data in the coastal margin, enabling the production of new inferences on sea-level change and extremes at dramatically improved spatial resolution around Australia.Read moreRead less
East Antarctica: subglacial heat flux constraints for ice sheet modelling. This project aims to quantify the heat flux from the East Antarctic continent into the base of the ice sheet via the derivation of a large geochemical database, together with elevation-based modelling and new heat flux measurements in regions formerly contiguous with East Antarctica. This subglacial heat flux is poorly constrained in current ice sheet models, but directly affects ice sheet behaviour. The output of this pr ....East Antarctica: subglacial heat flux constraints for ice sheet modelling. This project aims to quantify the heat flux from the East Antarctic continent into the base of the ice sheet via the derivation of a large geochemical database, together with elevation-based modelling and new heat flux measurements in regions formerly contiguous with East Antarctica. This subglacial heat flux is poorly constrained in current ice sheet models, but directly affects ice sheet behaviour. The output of this project will be a greatly improved heat flux map for East Antarctica that can be used in ice sheet modelling studies. This should drive significant improvement in models for the evolution of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in more accurate projections of ice discharge and associated sea level change.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE140100047
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,600,000.00
Summary
Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program: This project is for an Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The Program will recover drill cores, situate observatories, and conduct down-hole experiments in all the world's oceans from lowest to highest latitudes to address fundamental questions about Earth's history and processes within four high-priority scientific themes: clima ....Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program: This project is for an Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The Program will recover drill cores, situate observatories, and conduct down-hole experiments in all the world's oceans from lowest to highest latitudes to address fundamental questions about Earth's history and processes within four high-priority scientific themes: climate and ocean change - reading the past and informing the future; biosphere frontiers - deep life, biodiversity, and environmental forcing of ecosystems; earth connections - deep processes and their impact on earth's surface environment; earth in motion - processes and hazards on a human time scale.Read moreRead less
Flooding in Australia – are we properly prepared for how bad it can get? This project aims to investigate how floods have varied over the past 2000 years. Floods are a recurrent and natural part of Australia’s hydroclimate and are influenced strongly by climate variability. However, these influences are not yet completely understood or accounted for. This project will use novel insights from 2000 years of climate reconstructions to generate new knowledge about how bad flooding can get and what c ....Flooding in Australia – are we properly prepared for how bad it can get? This project aims to investigate how floods have varied over the past 2000 years. Floods are a recurrent and natural part of Australia’s hydroclimate and are influenced strongly by climate variability. However, these influences are not yet completely understood or accounted for. This project will use novel insights from 2000 years of climate reconstructions to generate new knowledge about how bad flooding can get and what causes flood frequency to change over time. A decision-making framework that allows for all the uncertainties associated with managing floods will also be developed. This will provide a critical evaluation of the accuracy of existing flood estimates, and also the reliability of infrastructure and policy based on those estimates.Read moreRead less