‘Foolish’ CSIRO job cuts will mean Australia unable to provide climate projections to global reports, scientists warn | CSIRO

Leading researchers have warned that redundancies at the national science agency mean Australia will no longer be able to provide climate projections as part of global reports and the ability to predict future damage to the country will be significantly reduced.

The CSIRO plans to sack a third of the team working on the national climate model, which provides forecasts that governments, councils, industry and farmers rely on when planning for the future, multiple sources have told Guardian Australia.

Senior scientists said this would result in Australia no longer having an international-standard climate model to contribute projections to major assessment reports by the world’s leading climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

CSIRO management is expected to confirm at a staff meeting on Thursday that it will cut around 100 scientists under a plan announced last November to cut full-time research positions by between 300 and 350. This follows the dismissal of 818 support staff last year.

The agency’s director general, Doug Hilton, said the latest cuts would continue despite the Albanian government announcing $387 million in additional CSIRO funding from the federal budget last week. The new money will be used largely to upgrade buildings and research infrastructure, including the Australian Center for Disease Preparedness in Geelong.

Nearly five of 15 CSIRO scientists working on the model, known as the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (Access), have been told they are likely to lose their jobs.

CSIRO management told a Senate inquiry in February that the impact of the cuts would be minimal because around 60 people were working on the climate model. But Andy Hogg, professor of ocean and climate modeling and director of Access-NRI, which supports software development supporting CSIRO projections, said this was not the case.

“If you look at the team of people with core skills, we understand there are 12 to 15 and about five people are gone,” he said. “These cuts will leave us deficient in basic climate science capacity in atmospheric and oceanographic modeling and understanding the concepts that truly drive our weather and climate.”

Christian Jakob, a professor at Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment and one of the leading climate modelers, agrees. “The number of climate model developers is relatively small. Certainly not 60,” he said. “They’re making sure we have a better model in a year. This will go away.”

Access is a computer-based model that uses international and national data on the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice to enable simulations of the future. Led by the CSIRO, it provides high-level forecasts of how the country could change under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.

The model underpins climate information that scientists use for more detailed analysis that can inform planning and investment decisions by governments, councils, industry, farmers and others.

Jakob said cutting CSIRO’s climate modeling expertise would “remove a key core capability” to prepare for the future. “Australia will no longer be seen as a credible contributor to the international assessment of climate change. Full stop,” he said. “I’m angry. I’ve been a climate modeler for 30 years. This means I can’t stand in front of people and say we’re giving the best information we can.”

A CSIRO spokesman said climate science capacity would be maintained.

“CSIRO will continue to provide climate data, models and scenarios to manage the impacts of climate change,” they said. “The proposed changes sharpen our efforts by reducing activity in selected areas, including atmospheric chemistry modelling, Indo-Pacific ocean dynamics and some operational support, so we can better align our climate portfolio with our future science priorities and deliver the strongest possible outcomes for Australia.”

But Hogg said there was a risk Australia would not be able to provide forecasts this year to inform the IPCC’s seventh major assessment report, due to be published in 2028 and 2029.

He said that despite Australia being the only country with modeling focused on the southern hemisphere, the CSIRO did not have a plan for how it would continue to contribute meaningfully to future global climate projections. “It’s going to be hard to rebuild that capacity. It’s going to cost twice as much to bring it back later,” he said.

Jakob said potential consequences of this included Australia losing its ability to attract top international scientific talent and a reduced capacity to understand issues such as what the melting of the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would mean for the Australian coastline.

“We need to know how other countries’ climates are changing because those will be important to us… and there’s the question of whether we can rely on other countries for information the way we used to,” he said. “I think that’s a very stupid way to go.”

While scientists criticized the CSIRO decision, researchers (including some people from the CSIRO who spoke on condition of anonymity) said the cuts were primarily a result of the federal governments’ failure to increase the agency’s direct funding for years in line with rising costs.

CSIRO managers are expected to secure 70% of funding from external sources, usually from industry or another government department, before a new research project is approved.

The Albanian government announced that CSIRO receives regular funding of around $1 billion annually, with an additional $278 million in 2025 and $387 million over four years in the last budget. Science minister Tim Ayres did not respond to questions about cuts to climate modeling capacity.