In the Oceans, Ice and Climate Centre, our Ocean Physics and Climate team focuses on understanding the movement, distribution and transformation of water masses within oceans and their interactions with the atmosphere and cryosphere.
Our research spans spatial scales from centimetre-scale turbulence to basin-scale overturning circulation, encompassing variability across time scales and long-term trends.
We study ocean currents and the associated fronts, meanders and eddies and their role in key ocean processes such as air-sea exchange, heat and salt transport, and mixing, and we explore the impacts of bathymetry, winds and tides.
We use advanced observing techniques, including satellite remote sensing, autonomous platforms, and shipboard and land- based measurements. We combine observations with state-of-the-art global ocean and high-resolution regional numerical models to investigate both large-scale ocean dynamics and small-scale processes.
Our work focuses on ocean regions of strategic and socio-economic importance to Australia, including the Southern Ocean, Antarctic margins, the Indian Ocean, the Indonesian Seas and Australian coastal areas. Our research connects with ocean ecology, biology and chemistry and is critical to understanding the ocean’s role in climate variability and sea level change – and it contributes to improved future climate predictions.
Our aim: to know if the changing oceans and sea-ice are influenced by humans.
Are you concerned about the climate and want to make a difference? Study our new major in Oceans, Climate and Ice as part of the Bachelor of Marine and Antarctic Science.
Image: A cylindrical oceanographic instrument emerges from the blue waters of an ocean with water samples from the deep. Credit: Mark Horstman AAPP