Welcome to the Australian Research Council's (ARC)
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About the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science
The Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is a major initiative funded by the Australian Research Council. The Centre is an international research consortium of five Australian universities and a suite of outstanding national and international Partner Organizations. It will build on and improve existing understanding of the modeling of regional climates to enable enhanced adaptation to and management of climate change, particularly in the Australian region.
The Centre was established in 2011 with extensive investment from the Australian Research Council, the University of New South Wales, the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, New South Wales Government, Monash University, the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Tasmania. It has strong links with the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) initiative and works in partnership with the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) Facility.
The Centre's focus, Climate System Science, is the quantitative study of the climate system designed to enable modeling of the future of the climate system. It is built on a core of the sciences of the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface. It includes the physics, dynamics and biology of these systems, and the flow of energy, water and chemicals between them. Climate System Science builds mathematical models of these systems based on observations. It describes these observations, and the underlying physics of the system, in computer codes. These computer codes are known as a "climate model" and utilize very large super computers. Most of our work is linked with the ACCESS model which is co-built by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.
The scale of research enabled by the Centre will provide for the enhancement of climate modeling and future climate projections particularly at regional scales, minimizing Australia’s economic, social and environmental vulnerability to climate change.
Latest news
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Centre of Excellence researcher wins the Priestley Medal 10 February 2012 Dr Lisa Alexander has just been named as the 2011 recipient of the Priestley Medal awarded by the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS). |
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Sophisticated land surface scheme added to CSIRO Mk3L climate model 13 December 2011 The impact of the land surface on climate will be simulated better then ever before in the CSIRO Mk3L climate system model following the addition of a sophisticated land surface scheme. |
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Australian Academy of Science honours Centre of Excellence researchers 06 December 2011 Two Centre of Excellence researchers have been honoured by the Australian Academy of Science in its 2012 awards for scientific excellence. |
Latest blog entries
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Jackson Tan's Maldives research: entry 10 09 November 2011 And so here I am in the Male International Airport, waiting to board my plane back home. It was a wild ride on the 50-seater from Gan to Male, though I should've expected that from radar and satellite images revealing intense convective activity there over the past few days. |
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Jackson Tan's Maldives research: entry 9 03 November 2011 The radars deployed here on Gan Island run 24/7 until the end of the DYNAMO field campaign in March next year. Consequently, every day is a working day. This is the nature of fieldwork. |
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Jackson Tan's Maldives research: entry 8 02 November 2011 I've previously mentioned an ARM (Atmospheric Radiation Measurement) Mobile Facility (AMF) deployment at the Gan International Airport by the US Department of Energy. |
The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers
Co-authored by Professor Steven Sherwood and Professor Matt England, this new Academy of Science report aims to summarise and clarify the current understanding of the science of climate change for non-specialist readers.
Global Warming: Science and the Message
Has science done enough to tell people what climate change actually is? UNSW's Dr Ben Newell on the psychology of global warming.
