Grants to further climate change and global warming knowledge

Curtin University of Technology has been awarded three Australian Research Council (ARC) grants including a 2nd QEII Fellowship awarded to Prof Kliti Grice to study past and future climate change and understand the mechanisms of global warming.

The grants were awarded as part of the recent round of funding under the ARC’s Discovery and Linkage Schemes. The projects will be administered by Curtin under the leadership of Grice.

The project will involve the establishment of a hydropyrolysis and isotope facility in Australia to characterise high-molecular-weight fractions of natural organic matter in soils, sediments, water, petroleum and coal.

“In addition to improving our ability to forecast environmental responses to future climate change and help Australia manage current threats to biodiversity, our research will also increase the ability to identify crude oil sources for the benefit of petroleum exploration here,” Grice said.

“The facility will also contribute to an improved understanding of controls on water quality, helping to protect precious freshwater resources that are under intense pressure from climate change.”

The project funded from 2008-2009 under the Linkage International Scheme will use chemostat experiments to mimic toxic environments associated with mass extinction events.

“On this project, I will be working with collaborator Prof Peter Ward based at the University of Washington to address the individual and combined effects of extinction trigger mechanisms on extant species that will shed light on global warming and climate change,” Grice said.