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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Triple whammy: ocean warming, La Niña, and cyclone produced Queensland floods 17 May 2012 A record La Niña event coupled with tropical cyclone Tasha generated most of the record deluge of rain that devastated much of Queensland in December 2010, but a new study has found that another big culprit was also in play - record high sea-surface temperatures off northern Australia. |
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Air pollution may be driving expansion of tropics - black carbon and near-surface ozone most likely culprits 17 May 2012 Man-made pollutants are likely to be pushing the boundary of the tropics further polewards in the Northern Hemisphere according to new research by a team of scientists. |
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1000 years of climate data confirms Australia's warming 17 May 2012 In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the last 1000 years. |
Latest blog entries
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John Allen's storm chasing: entry 1 17 May 2012 Is it time to leave yet? |
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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. |
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.
How climate scientists develop climate models
When commentators dismiss climate models as “merely models” it means they have failed to grasp how important models of all kinds have become to many parts of our daily life.
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.
