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Quarterly science bulletin
Edition 9, March 2025
Being there: fieldwork season in full swing
The first few months of this year have seen our researchers exactly where we need to be: working in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean with a range of Australian and international partners.
With the Australian Antarctic Program, our glaciologists investigated the Denman glacier from the terrestrial side.
Deep in the Antarctic interior, our ice core scientists were part of the team that drilled the first 150 metres of the Million Year Ice Core.
Our sea-ice scientists have been working on German and Chinese icebreakers in the Weddell and Ross Seas respectively. In the last week, our partner researchers with CSIRO and IMOS departed Hobart on RV Investigator for the 2025 voyage to maintain the Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) observatory.
And right now, 60 scientists are on Australia's icebreaker RSV Nuyina (pronounced noy-yee-nah), in East Antarctica for two months to explore the Denman Glacier from the marine side. Many are PhD students and early-career researchers, some on their first voyage. A third are from AAPP, and more than half are from the University of Tasmania. You can follow their progress here.
This voyage is undertaking ambitious work that is critical for Australia’s future and the welfare of the global community, in a newly emerging region of concern for Antarctica’s contribution to sea-level rise: the Denman glacier-ice shelf system.
The up-to-100-metre high ice wall of the Denman Glacier front. By comparison, RSV Nuyina rises 40 metres above the waterline (photo: Pete Harmsen/AAD)
The Australian Antarctic Science Council has released its priority plan for the next ten years of Antarctic science — the Australian Antarctic Science Decadal Strategy 2025-2035 — with climate change, sea level rise and biodiversity at the centre of Australia’s science and research ambitions. We will continue to work with the Australian government on its implementation.
Welcome to the latest edition of 'Southern Signals' (archive here), a quarterly bulletin to inform decision-makers, policy-shapers, journalists, researchers, stakeholders and the general public about our science and research activities — and why they matter.
Thank you for your interest! This will be my last Southern Signals as leader of the AAPP — Prof Delphine Lannuzel will be taking the reins upon her return from the Denman Marine Voyage, and I will continue to be involved with AAPP as an affiliate researcher while I undertake my Laureate. I have enjoyed this role enormously, and wish you all the best.
cheers
Professor Nathan Bindoff
Program leader, Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP)
University of Tasmania, Hobart
‘A dream experiment’: our icebreaker is on a crucial mission to Antarctica
"As an oceanographer, I’m excited about the prospect of getting ocean, ice and climate data from a region where few observations have been collected."
Reconstructing the record of Antarctic sea-ice extent back to 1899
How do recent extreme lows in Antarctic sea ice compare to sea-ice extent from before satellite records in the earlier part of the 20th century?
What we did last summer: Fishing for a glacier's secrets
Two glaciologists. A five-metre long drill. More than a kilometre of line. What it takes to plumb the depths beneath a floating ice shelf in East Antarctica.
Chilling effect: US science cuts and Australian climate research
AAPP and other experts warn that Australian meteorologists and scientists will be affected by mass firings at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
International Women's Day was celebrated on RSV Nuyina as the Denman Marine Voyage headed south. All four science coordinators on the voyage are female, as well as about two-thirds of the scientists on board (photo: Pete Harmsen/AAD)
SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Our scientists publish more than 100 research papers each year
Sink or swim? The contributions of krill poop and migration to the storage of carbon in the deep ocean
Earth at 1.5 degrees warming: How vulnerable is Antarctica and over what time-scales?
Microplastics in Southern Ocean sea ice: the first pan-Antarctic survey of microplastics
On 1 March 2025, the first dedicated marine science voyage on Australia's icebreaker RSV Nuyina departed Hobart for the Denman Glacier in East Antarctica (cover photo: Pete Harmsen/AAD)
