By Andrew Darby
Australia's great winter chiller, Antarctic sea ice, is coming under closer scrutiny as it expands under climate change.
The annual ocean freeze-up is to be the focus of a new partnership between Australian, and Chinese scientists, whose interest in Antarctica is escalating.
Despite widespread global warming and the loss of much of the Arctic ice pack, sea ice around the bottom of the world has been expanding by an average 1.2 per cent per decade, satellite records show.
Stronger winds produced by ozone depletion and greenhouse gases are blowing ice out from the continent, the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre's Jan Leiser said.
"This is already one of the largest natural processes on Earth," Dr Leiser, a marine glaciologist, said.
It influences weather globally, and each year plays a big role in Australia's winter, he said.
Variations in sea ice extent have been shown to be linked to drought in the south of Western Australia
This winter, under the warming influence of El Nino, ice cover of the Southern Ocean topped out at 18.83 million square km on 6 October. This figure - or 1.33 million square km below last year's all-time record.
The Hobart-based centre is joining with China's National Marine Environment Forecasting Centre to study sea ice, mainly in waters off the Australian Antarctic Territory, where Beijing has a strong national program too.
Dr Leiser said that under the collaboration China would be able to provide satellite data and a forecasting model to Australian scientists who excelled at remote sensing work and satellite imagery.
The Chinese centre's director general, Wang Hui, said: "For China, this is a new frontier area."
Australian sea ice expertise helped in the multi-nation effort to free the Russian icebreaker Akademik Shokalskiy in January 2014, Professor Wang said.
"We worked together to provide a very successful rescue last year," he said.