The fate of the 'sentinel of the southern hemisphere' is a pointer to how Australia's climate research will fare in a funding world that has lately turned more hostile.
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| Cape Grim: The future of climate science in Australia hangs in the balance. Photo: John Woudstra |
Forty years ago next month Paul Fraser and three other CSIRO scientists towed a hardy NASA-built caravan chock with sensitive detecting equipment to Cape Grim on the pristine windswept tip of north-west Tasmania.
The make-shift facility quickly made its mark, detecting ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere as they blew past in the stiff Roaring Forties. Over the decades since, the site also tracked the relentless rise of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.
Researchers shed the caravan in 1981, replacing it with more permanent structures. The site is now "the sentinel of the southern hemisphere" and one of the top three in the world, says Mary Voice, president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.
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| Cape Grim in the early days: men in a van. Photo: CSIRO |
If the gas collection and analysis were to cease, the emergence of new, ozone-eating or other harmful chemicals "might be missed" – let alone the tracking of gases that are heating up the planet, she says.
That Cape Grim's fate – and much of Australia's climate research – hangs in the balance surprises many just months after the country signed up to a global effort in Paris to limit global warming to 1.5-2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
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| Stocking 40 years of gas samples from Cape Grim, at CSIRO's Aspendale centre. Photo: Supplied |
The wrangling has been prompted by CSIRO's decision five weeks ago to cull as many as 100 scientists from its Oceans & Atmosphere division as part of 350 job cuts.
"Australia turns it back on climate science," was the New York Times editors' take a week ago.
CSIRO wants to steer resources to limiting and adapting to climate change, while cutting staff involved in monitoring and modelling by half.
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| CSIRO's GASLab at Aspendale, on Melbourne's sandbelt. Photo: Supplied |
CSIRO says the university sector could take up the slack, but their funding is typically short-term. For instance, the seven-year funds for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science - which takes in five universities including UNSW and Monash - run out at the end of 2017.
While CSIRO chiefs have pledged to spare Cape Grim, Fraser said in a submission to a Senate committee examining the cuts that the modelling and measuring capabilities of gases would "be unable survive the proposed 50-100 per cent" cuts.
Relations with 25 leading global research institutions were also at risk if the Tasmanian site and its supporting CSIRO labs in Aspendale on Melbourne's south-east were to go. Under threat include "the world's most important archive" of background atmosphere, and one of CSIRO's most-decorated research teams, Fraser – now an honorary CSIRO fellow – wrote.
CSIRO's climate funds were already facing a squeeze. The Australian Climate Change Science Program, axed by the Abbott government, was worth $5 million to CSIRO and $2.5 million a year to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Its replacement program, due to kick in from July, delivers an annual $3 million and $1.2 million, respectively, with $800,000 earmarked to universities.
CSIRO has already slashed its contribution this year to Cape Grim by four-fifths to $230,000 after months of bickering with its bureau partners over contracts.
Sources tell Fairfax Media the two agencies are now discussing the transfer of key CSIRO modelling staff and some of the Cape Grim-related roles to the bureau. Questions remain over whether funding will accompany the scientists – and how many will be retained.
Alarmed by the potential disintegration of Australia's climate research talent, leading scientists have been brainstorming more radical alternatives. One is the creation of a new standalone national research institute to provide long-term funding for climate prediction.
CSIRO, itself, doesn't rule out supporting such a centre, which might take the form of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre.
"This is an option CSIRO is working through with various parties, both internal and external, to ensure important climate research and modelling is continuing and to maintain strong linkages to the adaptation and mitigation work that CSIRO wants to increase its focus on in future," a spokesman said.
The bureau's official line is that it "is one of a number of parties with an interest in climate science and we are engaging positively to support Australia's climate science capability".
One senior bureau scientist, though, is wary about his agency becoming the main home for climate research. "If it lives in BoM, the knives will come out again for the bureau," the scientist says, referring to attacks during the Abbott government.
While a long-shot, creating a separate centre and basing it in Hobart – home to Australia's antarctic science and support operations – could be a shrewd political move, the scientist says.
A senior government official agrees the creation of a new centre is unlikely at this point, with efforts concentrated instead on a smooth transition of resources to the bureau.
Fraser frets, though, about carving out CSIRO's climate units. Remaining related work, such as aerosols and reactive gas monitoring, "would end up with sub-critical mass and be very vulnerable" to future cuts, he tells Fairfax Media.
On the other hand, public-good science – which is of value even if customers aren't readily available – has been a dwindling proportion of CSIRO's work for years.
"Perhaps the only way out is to completely divest CSIRO [of the climate work] and give it to someone else," he says.
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