Job cuts at the national science agency mean Australia will no longer be able to submit climate projections to form part of global reports and will have significantly reduced ability to forecast future damage to the country, leading researchers have warned.
Multiple sources told Guardian Australia that CSIRO planned to sack a third of the team working on the national climate model that provides projections relied on by governments, councils, industry and farmers as they plan for the future.
Senior scientists said it 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 is making about 100 scientists redundant as part of a plan announced last November to cut full-time research positions by between 300 and 350. It follows the sacking of 818 support staff last year.
The agency’s chief executive, Doug Hilton, has said the latest cuts would go ahead despite the Albanese government announcing $387m in extra CSIRO funding in last week’s federal budget. The new money is largely to upgrade buildings and research infrastructure, including the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness at Geelong.
About five of the 15 CSIRO scientists who work 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 as it had about 60 people working on the climate model. But Andy Hogg, a professor of ocean and climate modelling and the director of Access-NRI, which supports the software development that underpins the CSIRO projections, said that was not the case.
“If you look at the team of people on the core capability it’s 12 to 15, and we understand that it’s about five that are going,” he said. “These cuts will make us suboptimal in core climate science capability in atmospheric and oceanographic modelling, and in understanding the concepts that really drive our weather and climate.”
Christian Jakob, a professor at Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment and leading climate modeller, agreed. “It is a relatively small number developing climate models. It’s certainly not 60,” he said. “They are making sure we have a better model in a year’s time. That will go away.”
Access is a computer-based model that draws on international and national data related to the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice to allow simulations of the future. Led by CSIRO, it provides high-level projections of how the country is likely to change under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.
The model underpins climate information that scientists, governments, councils, industry, farmers and others use for more fine-grained analysis that can shape planning and investment decisions.
Jakob said cutting CSIRO’s climate modelling expertise would “remove a basic foundational capability” to prepare for the future. “Australia will no longer be seen as a credible contributor to international assessment of climate change. Full stop,” he said. “I feel angry. I have been a climate modeller for 30 years. It will mean I can’t stand up in front of people and say we’re giving the best information we can.”
A CSIRO spokesperson said its climate science capability would be retained.
“CSIRO will continue to provide climate data, models and scenarios to manage the impacts of climate change,” they said. “The proposed changes sharpen our effort 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 may not be able to submit projections this year to inform the IPCC’s seventh major assessment report, due out in 2028 and 2029.
He said CSIRO had no plan for how it would continue to contribute meaningfully to future global climate projections beyond that despite Australia being the only country with modelling focused on the southern hemisphere. “That capacity will be difficult to rebuild. It would cost twice as much to get it back in later,” he said.
Jakob said the potential ramifications included Australia losing the ability to attract top international scientific talent, and having less 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 they will matter to us … and there is a question of whether we can rely on other countries for information as we used to,” he said. “I think it’s a very foolish path to go down.”
While scientists were critical of the CSIRO decision, researchers – including some within CSIRO who spoke on the condition of anonymity – said the cuts were primarily a result of years of federal governments not increasing the agency’s direct funding in line with rising costs.
CSIRO managers are expected to secure 70% of funding from external sources, usually from industry or another government department agency, before a new research project is approved.
The Albanese government says CSIRO receives about $1bn in recurrent annual funding and that it has provided an additional $278m in 2025 and $387m over four years in the latest budget. The science minister, Tim Ayres, did not respond to questions about cuts to climate modelling capacity.
