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07 August 2009
ACE news for climate change science in CRC funding round

Dr Tony Press, CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC), today welcomed the announcement that the Australian Government will fund an extension of the ACE CRC.

"This is recognition that the climate change science being conducted at the ACE CRC is both extremely important and of high quality.

"Our research underpins what Australia and the world needs to know about climate change and its impacts - not only for Antarctica, but for Australia and globally.

"Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are major drivers of the world's climate systems, and any changes there will have profound implications regionally and around the world," Dr Press said.

The ACE CRC's new five-year research plan will build on its outstanding contribution to international climate science.

It will investigate four key areas:

  1. Antarctica's ice sheets and the surrounding sea ice
  2. changes in the Southern Ocean's temperature and currents
  3. the role of the Southern Ocean in storing carbon, and
  4. the impacts of changes on Southern Ocean ecosystems.

"Some of the biggest questions about how the world should respond to climate change have to be answered in the Antarctic," Dr Press said.

"This is because Antarctica's great ice sheets, the sea ice around Antarctica, and the world's great ocean currents are all linked. Their global influence is immense."