A Tasmanian scientist has been awarded a research grant of nearly $1 million to study Antarctic landfast ice and its climate impacts.
Dr Alex Fraser is a specialist when it comes to researching landfast ice – frozen seawater attached to the Antarctic coastline or grounded icebergs – with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart.
Dr Fraser’s previous research showed that landfast ice is likely to reduce in size by the end of the century.
“Landfast ice is hugely important for global climate and Southern Ocean ecosystems but its extent plummeted significantly last year,” said Dr Fraser.
“This ARC Future Fellowship is extremely timely because it will enable large-scale, high resolution, automated mapping of the extent and thickness of landfast ice.”
“In turn, this will enable us to incorporate landfast ice in Australia’s new ice-ocean Earth system model for the first time, which will allow assessment of its impacts on global ocean circulation and ice shelf melt.”
The grant of $966,706 will also support two PhDs and three Honours projects at the University of Tasmania.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Anthony Koutoulis, said Dr Fraser is an “outstanding mid-career scientist”.
“This grant will allow Dr Fraser and the University to continue growing crucial research that addresses the big science questions involving sea ice around Antarctica, at a time when major changes appear to be happening in the Southern Ocean with potential knock-on effects globally,” Professor Koutoulis said.
