CSIRO has told staff it will cut 92 positions in its environment unit – just days after the Australian government boosted funding to the national science agency by A$387 million.

Our scientific colleagues have told us roughly a third of CSIRO’s climate modellers will lose their jobs – between four and six roles out of about 15 scientists. These cuts come on the back of decades of slow but steady reductions in funding in the same area. This threatens Australia’s ability to do its own climate modelling at a time when the United States has drastically cut its climate science program.

The cuts pose a direct threat to Australia’s climate model, known as ACCESS (Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator). It’s the only global climate model developed in the southern hemisphere.

If ACCESS funding is reduced, Australia will have less ability to model how climate change will affect us. That means less ability to forecast how threats such as sea-level rise will play out and plan how we adapt.

Our scientific colleagues have been told these plans include cutting roughly a third of the approximately 15 scientists who look after ACCESS – a foundational climate program that few people know about.

A climate model is a computer simulation of Earth’s climate system. It might sound abstract, but its findings are extremely important to all of us.

Global climate models such as ACCESS began as scientific tools to study Earth’s changing climate. But they have become much more than that. These sophisticated models have become vital for policymakers who have to take critical decisions at global, national and........

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