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Quarterly science bulletin
Edition 11, October 2025
The power of partnerships
The Australian Antarctic Program Partnership comprises about 150 students, staff and partner researchers, largely based in the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania. Each year (now into the seventh of our ten-year program) we hold a workshop to review our achievements and plan for the future.
Our 2025 workshop was a vibrant event that demonstrated how well our research projects are working together in a cross-disciplinary and multi-agency way. There's power in partnerships — at the very least they're essential to undertake an ambitious science enterprise such as AAPP in an unforgiving and remote location such as Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.
In this edition of Southern Signals, I'm pleased to present a special report about the impacts of six years of AAPP research (best viewed on a large screen or laptop). We're committed to turning our projects and publications into real-world impact, providing information to underpin decision-making that recognises the centrality of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean to the global climate system.
I'm excited to see more than 50 people coming from around the world to IMAS for the Southern Ocean Bio-optics Workshop in November. PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ecosystem) is a NASA satellite mission to observe global ocean color, biogeochemistry, and ecology from space, as well as the carbon cycle, aerosols and clouds. For the first time, this workshop will bring together two disparate scientific communities, experts in bio-optics (using light to study biological information) and photo-physiology (how organisms use light energy), to harness the once-in-a-generation opportunity of the PACE mission.
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.
kind regards
Professor Delphine Lannuzel
Program leader, Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP)
University of Tasmania, Hobart
A world with less ice
When a team of researchers started to put together a paper about the loss of Antarctic summer-time sea ice a few years ago, they never dreamed that winter-time sea ice would also crash to record low extremes while they were writing it
Antarctic research shared with Australian politicians and policymakers
Keeping Antarctica and the Southern Ocean front-of-mind for decision-makers with an old-fashioned mailout of briefing papers
Australia and Japan launch plan for joint Antarctic research
Two Antarctic nations working together in Antarctic and Southern Ocean science
Unlocking how iron shapes ocean life and climate
AAPP biogeochemistry team win Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant to iron out wrinkles in climate models
Shifting foundations of the Antarctic food web
“We may be witnessing a fundamental reorganisation of life around Antarctica": comprehensive study tracks change in polar phytoplankton
AAPP students, staff and partners at the 2025 Workshop
SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Our scientists publish more than 100 research papers each year
Abrupt change:
evidence is emerging of rapid, interacting and sometimes self-perpetuating changes in the Antarctic environment
The Southern Ocean Time Series: now in its 28th year, SOTS is the longest-running observation program in the open Southern Ocean
Antarctica and Climate Change: this multidisciplinary review was a key input for Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment
Watch a video from the Japan-Australia Antarctic science workshop in Tokyo
