Australia's 10-year Antarctic monitoring strategy

 The important role ships, ice cores and krill surveys play in gathering scientific data in Antarctica

This article have highlighted the important role ships play in gathering scientific data in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean has been outlined at a leading Antarctic science conference in Hobart. The biennial Australian Antarctic Research Conference was held at the University of Tasmania and attracted 400 researchers from around the globe. The Australian Antarctic Science Decadal Strategy (the Science Strategy) was released by the Australian Government in February 2025. The Science Strategy supports Australia’s Antarctic national interests, including to conduct world-class scientific research consistent with national priorities. It delivers on the commitment in the overarching Australian Antarctic Strategy and 20-Year Action Plan (the Strategy and Action Plan) to develop a ten-year Antarctic Science Plan to implement Australia’s Antarctic science priorities. Mission is to conduct impactful science in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean which supports Australia’s national interests. And vision is global leadership and excellence in Antarctic and Southern Ocean science which is priority driven, influential and is at the core of Australia’s Antarctic activities. This Science Implementation Plan (the Science Plan) presents the first iteration of science activities to deliver the Science Strategy. It is designed which will evolve to maximise the delivery of science priorities within available resources, and to respond to evolving opportunities and challenges. It will also be agile to align with strategic direction set out in the current Strategy and Action Plan, and any future iterations. 

Dr. Patricia Miloslavich, who leads the Australian Antarctic Division's Antarctic Monitoring Program, said that between 1990 and 2026, the Australian Antarctic Program's Aurora Australis and RSV Nuyina, the French Program's l'Astrolabe and the CSIRO's RV Investigator made 379 voyages, traveled nearly 2.5 million km's (1.6 million miles) and collected 137 million measurements. Sea surface and air temperature data collected by the Aurora Australis alone from 1991 to 2020 showed a close correlation with global climate data from the UN's World Meteorological Organization and increasing "warm" anomalies over that time. "With the Aurora's data alone, we can tell the story we all know by now, which is that both the ocean and the air are getting warmer," Miloslavich said. "For the specific Southern Ocean section covered by the Aurora Australis over 30 years, we can see that air temperatures have increased both north and south of 50°S, which is approximately the boundary between Antarctic climates to the south and mid-latitude climates to the north. "In contrast, sea surface temperatures over that time only increased significantly to the north of 50°S, reflecting the initial delay in human-caused climate change signals appearing in the ocean around Antarctica."

The Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) delivers world class science that advances our Antarctic national interests and supports Australia’s other national interests in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. AAP science activities are delivered across a range of Australian government agencies, organisations and academic institutions. The Australian Antarctic Division of the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) coordinates delivery of AAP science activities in partnership with AAP science partners. Collaborations with other national Antarctic programs and international research institutions further augment Australia’s Antarctic science activities. Together, science partners in the AAP bring the breadth of expertise and research infrastructure needed to address the complex challenges facing Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and achieve the outcomes identified in the Science Strategy. Another long-term, ship-based data collection method, the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR), is towed behind ships and samples plankton on a silk ribbon. The CPR Survey is the world's oldest and most geographically extensive marine biological monitoring program. It was initiated in 1931 and implemented in the Southern Ocean by the AAD in 1991. "With the CPR data, we can see that in the Southern Ocean, there's been a shift toward smaller zooplankton, that some species are moving farther south and that there's been a decline in pteropods in some locations," Miloslavich said. Improvements in ship design are contributing to better data collection. Where the Aurora Australis used nets to bring marine creatures on board, destroying many delicate specimens in the process, RSV Nuyina uses a wet well. On the Denman Marine Voyage in 2025, the wet well ingested an intriguing pteropod known as a sea butterfly, or Clio pyramidata, allowing scientists to study the creature intact in the laboratory. Data are collected along the way, even when RSV Nuyina is on a resupply voyage. "The atmospheric and oceanographic underway data collected by RSV Nuyina are key for the Bureau of Meteorology, feeding into the national weather model ACCESS and global climate models," Miloslavich said.

The AAD is introducing a new Planning Framework that is designed to provide a structured and consistent approach for linking long term strategic priorities to the annual delivery of AAP activities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The framework is intended to strengthen how we plan and sequence work across science, operations, infrastructure and station sustainment. It aims to establish clear decision points, align commitments to realistic capacity, and lock-in the Annual Delivery Plan for the AAP 12 months ahead of delivery. This will reduce late changes, improve certainty for all partners, and ensure regulatory, logistic and resource requirements for the AAP are factored in earlier. This is designed to reduce risk, including through clearer understanding of program lifecycle costs, which will allow for better AAP outcomes. Within this broader framework, the Integrated Planning Process (IPP) and the Season Operational Planning Process (SOPP) remain key components during the transition period. The IPP develops future season guidance (2-3 seasons ahead) assessing proposed activities against strategic priorities and within available capacity across multiple seasons. The SOPP uses the IPP guidance to focus on detailed planning for the upcoming year’s delivery, including vessel, aviation, station and field operations. Together, these processes ensure that all projects, operational requirements and regulatory obligations are assessed in a consistent way, aligned to strategic priorities and available capacity, and scheduled to maximise safety and efficiency.

As the Planning Framework is fully implemented, these processes will progressively consolidate into an integrated, planning cycle that provides clearer visibility and earlier certainty for delivering the Science Plan. Miloslavich's presentation outlined how Australian Antarctic Program campaigns and voyages planned for the next three seasons will contribute to the international collaborative program, Antarctica InSync. The Antarctica InSync program is endorsed by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP). Antarctica InSync will coordinate synchronized observations of ice, ocean, atmosphere, climate and ecosystems across the continent over two seasons (2027–28 and 2028–29) and aims to deliver the comprehensive evidence needed to inform global responses to climate change, biodiversity loss and human impact. "We have four strategic campaigns coming up in the next three years to support the delivery of the Science Decadal Strategy," Miloslavich said. On the continent, we will continue with the Million Year Ice Core (MYIC) project and the scientific activities carried out during the East Antarctic traverse from Casey to the MYIC project site high on the East Antarctic ice sheet. In the ocean, we will have the KaKE (krill and krill ecosystems) campaign in the 2027–28 season to assess the status of the krill-based ecosystem in the Mawson region.

The Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) voyage in 2028–29 will study changing sea ice conditions at the time of the annual maximum in sea ice extent in September, a time when very few expeditions have gathered scientific information in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The ECCO voyage, the East Antarctic Ecosystems-CCAMLR, Climate and Ocean voyage, is scheduled for 2029–30 and will build on the work of the KaKE project and add scientific data to guide the design of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in East Antarctica. The interdisciplinary science program will support krill biomass assessments for the Commission for the Conservation of Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), biodiversity and environmental monitoring to underpin the establishment of MPAs. It is anticipated that the Australian Antarctic Research Conference will be held again in 2028. "The research presented at this year's conference really showed the range and depth of Australia's expertise in Antarctic and Southern Ocean science," Miloslavich said. The key activities require planning and research coordination. They are not designed to be an exhaustive list of all science activities that will contribute to delivering the Science Strategy, particularly the Australia-based activities. The science sustainment, campaign, emerging priority, and other science requirement categories each involve a substantial amount of Australia-based science activity and capabilities to plan and prepare for focus years of field activity, and to subsequently realise the outcomes from field-based data gathered through the AAP.