Dr Andrew Moy: BSc (Hons), PhD

Research interests

My research is focused on palaeoclimate — ‘past climate’. I have been lucky enough to work with national and international research teams that use ice core and marine sediment records that can be used to reconstruct past climate conditions.

In my current role as an Ice Core Research Scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division, I work with a team that uses ice core records to understand past and present climate variability, and change, with particular emphasis in the Australian Antarctic Territory, the Southern Ocean, and Australian sub-Antarctic territories. Our work uses existing and recently collected ice cores from East Antarctica to continue the development of ice core records and climate reconstructions, to explore climate processes, and to improve the calibrations and interpretations used in ice core studies.

I am currently using water isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen (deuterium) in ice cores from East Antarctica to look at changes in snowfall, temperature, atmospheric composition, and atmospheric circulation. These records will help us to understand, quantify and determine the natural variability of climate processes, and changes caused by human activities.

Prior to working at the Australian Antarctic Division, my PhD and post-doctoral research used micro-fossils from marine sediment cores and sediment traps from the South Tasman Rise region to reconstruct past deep water circulation and carbonate chemistry in the Southern Ocean, and to study the effects of ocean acidification (caused by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide dissolving in the ocean) on calcareous shelled organisms in the Southern Ocean.

I have a background in Earth Sciences and have previously worked as a mine geologist in northern Queensland.

Current projects

• East Antarctic Synthesis of Ice cores (EASI) — Ice core records of continental, hemispheric and global variability and change (#4537)
• IPICS 2k ice core array: Filling the climatological gap of the Indian Ocean sector from Wilhelm II Land (#4414)
• Development and application of new highly sensitive low volume capillary ion chromatography techniques to deliver higher resolution ice core derived paleoclimatic records (#4405)
• Techniques to deliver higher resolution ice core derived paleoclimatic records (#4405)
• Aurora Basin North ice coring (#4075)
• Law Dome Summit Snow-Climate Observatory (#4062)
• High Resolution East Antarctic Climate History (HiREACH): Ice core records of continental, hemispheric and global change (#4061)

International collaborations

• Co-leader, Climate variability in Antarctica and Southern Hemisphere in the past 2000 years (CLIVASH2k)

• International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS)

Key outcome areas

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Australian Antarctic strategic plan with particular focus on Theme 1: Climate Processes and Change and through the Stream implementation plans.

Related links

• Tiny fossils reveal 25,000 years of Southern Ocean carbon history
• Ice Cube Reflection from the South — Share a magic moment from the ice with our Ice Core Scientist Dr Andrew Moy
• Arctic drilling lessons for the Antarctic
• Looking to the past for changes in the present (Australian Antarctic Magazine 12: 24, 2007)

Selected publications

Moy, A. D., Palmer, M. R., Howard, W. R., Bijma, J., Cooper, M. J., Calvo, E., Pelejero, C., Gagan, M. K., & Chalk, T. B., 2019. Varied contribution of the Southern Ocean to deglacial atmospheric CO₂ rise, Nature Geoscience: 10.1038/s41561-41019–40473-41569.

Moy, A. D., Howard, W. R., Bray, S. G., & Trull, T. W., 2009. Reduced calcification in modern Southern Ocean planktonic foraminifera, Nature Geoscience, 2: 276–280.

Klein, F., Abram, N. J., Curran, M. A. J., Goosse, H., Goursaud, S., Masson-Delmotte, V., Moy, A., Neukom, R., Orsi, A., Sjolte, J., Steiger, N., Stenni, B., & Werner, M., 2019. Assessing the robustness of Antarctic temperature reconstructions over the past 2 millennia using pseudoproxy and data assimilation experiments, Climate of the Past, 15(2): 661–684.

Vallelonga, P., Maffezzoli, N., Moy, A. D., Curran, M. A. J., Vance, T. R., Edwards, R., Hughes, G., Barker, E., Spreen, G., Saiz-Lopez, A., Corella, J. P., Cuevas, C. A., & Spolaor, A., 2017. Sea-ice-related halogen enrichment at Law Dome, coastal East Antarctica, Climate of the Past, 13(2): 171–184.

See more of Dr Moy’s publications on Google Scholar