Publications database

The Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) serves as a unique Earth-based analog for space travel, using its extreme, isolated environments to conduct research that directly supports long-duration human spaceflight. Studies focus on the long-term effects of confinement and isolation on human health…

Antarctic sea ice plays many crucial roles in the physical environments and ecosystems of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. In this study, we synthesize the physical, biogeochemical, ecosystem, and societal impacts of summers with extreme low Antarctic sea-ice coverage.

One of the largest sectors of the Southern Ocean is the Indian Sector, which plays an important role in regulating the Earth's climate and supports a diverse ecosystem. To understand how climate change impacts the environment in this sector…

Human-caused climate change worsens with every increment of additional warming, although some impacts can develop abruptly. The potential for abrupt changes is far less understood in the Antarctic compared with the Arctic, but evidence is emerging for rapid…

This paper explores the research, making, and performance of Sastrugi: Sounds of Antarctic Sea Ice. Combining the techniques of sonification, field recording, and musique concrète, Sastrugi orchestrates multi-sensory world building for the audience where immersive soundscapes…

Gravity waves provide a key mechanism for the vertical transport of energy and momentum from the active near-surface weather to the upper reaches of the neutral and ionised atmosphere. Generation mechanisms vary between storms, fronts…

Vincennes Bay is a region of East Antarctica vulnerable to sub-ice shelf basal melting from warm ocean water intrusions. The sub-ice shelf bathymetry in this region is largely unknown, despite its importance for ocean dynamics within ice shelf cavities and associated sub-ice shelf basal melting.

Antarctic landfast sea ice is an integral component of coastal and nearshore ecosystems, providing bottom-ice habitats that harbour some of the most productive marine microalgal communities on Earth. Ice algal biomass is driven by the spatio-temporal dynamics of snow and sea-ice covers…

The use of satellite tags has yielded important information to better understand cetacean ecology and to improve cetacean conservation. However, tag deployment duration has been highly variable and typically shorter than their battery life on most large whale species. Between 2011 and 2018…

Understanding how marine predators explore dynamic ocean environments is key for assessing the ecological significance of different habitats and for informing conservation efforts. This is particularly critical in remote and poorly surveyed regions…

Aim … To map presence, absence and ignorance of Antarctic seabird breeding occupancy at the spatial resolution of ice-free habitat sites to identify knowledge gaps and inform management and conservation. Location … East Antarctica between longitudes 30°?E and 150°?E.

Antarctic ice shelves typically comprise continental meteoric ice, in situ-accumulated meteoric ice, and marine ice accumulated at the shelf base. Using borehole optical televiewer logs from across Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, we identify and report an intermediate ice unit…

The future response of the Antarctic Slope Current (ASC) to projected transient changes in winds, radiative forcing, and meltwater input is examined in a high-resolution ocean-sea ice model. Meltwater changes are found to dominate the almost -circumpolar strengthening of the ASC.

Newly formed sea ice can incorporate considerable amounts of organic matter including phytoplankton during its freezing and growth. This initial incorporation influences the standing stocks of ice algae, a fundamental component of high-latitude marine ecosystems.

Continent-continent collisions develop mature orogenic systems over tens of millions of years, creating a thermally weakened mid-crustal infrastructure layer (15–50 km deep) that flows laterally from the thickened mountain ranges or plateaus.

Around the margins of Antarctica, dense waters formed on the continental shelf are exported to oceanic depths. This overflow of dense waters to the abyss ventilates the ocean, and is vital to the global overturning circulation.

Sea-ice surface temperature from atmospheric reanalysis has been used as an indicator of ice melt and climate change. However, its performance in atmospheric reanalyses is not fully understood in Antarctica. Here, we quantified biases in six widely-used reanalyses using satellite observations…

Interleaving layers are commonly observed in the subsurface ocean near thermohaline fronts. They imply a lateral exchange of water mass properties and have been shown to influence both lateral and vertical mixing rates. We examine a set of in situ observations…

Standing meanders along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) have been shown to be regions of elevated eddy variability, meridional heat transport, and vertical exchange. In this study, we investigate the influence of a standing meander south of Australia on air-sea heat fluxes…

The vertically integrated zonal momentum balance of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is dominated by wind stress at the surface and topographic form stress (TFS) at the bottom. It has been argued that wind stress is transferred from the surface to the bottom by transient baroclinic eddies…

When seawater freezes, sea ice forms. Though seemingly straightforward, the formation, growth, and decay of sea ice involve complexities. Sea ice, its extent, and its physical properties are of paramount importance to the climate system. This is in large part due to its vast coverage at the poles.

Antarctica's contribution to global sea-level rise is deeply uncertain, with subglacial water suspected to play a critical role, yet its impact remains unclear.

The Southern Ocean (south of 30°S) contributes significantly to global ocean carbon uptake through the solubility, physical and biological pumps. Many studies have estimated carbon export to the deep ocean, but very few have attempted a basin-scale perspective, or accounted for the sea-ice zone…

During the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the Holocene, the atmospheric N2O mole fraction increased by 80 nmol mol?1. Using ice core measurements of N2O isotopomer ratios, we show that this increase was driven by increases in both nitrification and denitrification…