Dr Jan Zika (UNSW Mathematics & Statistics) and Prof Matthew England (UNSW Climate Change Research Centre) were awarded $1M in funding in today’s much-awaited announcement by the Australian Research Council. Their Discovery Projects will examine the role of ocean heat content in sea level change and rapid warming near in Antarctica.
Jan’s Discovery Project, “Ocean heat content change and its impact on sea level”, aims to improve projections of possible sea level changes. Poor understanding of the way in which heat is absorbed at the sea surface and distributed by ocean circulation is a leading source of uncertainty in projections of global surface temperature and regional sea level rise by the end of this century. The project, which is a collaboration with Professor John Church (UNSW), Professor Jonathan Gregory (University of Reading, UK), and Dr Xuebin Zhang (CSIRO), aims to transform our ability to predict how ocean temperature and sea level will change in the future.
Matt’s Discovery Project, “Risks of rapid ocean warming at the Antarctic continental margin”, 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. Matt’s project will use high-resolution global and regional ocean/sea-ice models 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. The project is a collaboration with Dr Andrew Hogg (ANU), Dr Adele Morrison (ANU), Dr Paul Spence (UNSW) and Dr Stephen Griffies (Princeton University, USA).
Full details of today’s ARC grants announcement can be found here.
Mathematics for Planet Earth 