The Antarctic Research Centre provides world-leading research on how the Antarctic is responding to climate change and the consequences, both globally and for New Zealand.
We believe this research opens up exciting opportunities and challenges for young scientists, as well as providing a sound basis for international debate and policy development on global change issues.
Our sedimentary research provides important archives of changes in ice sheets and glaciers and their influence on climate and sea level through time.
Sedimentology researchOur research into ice cores helps New Zealand to understand the major Southern Hemisphere climate drivers causing high frequency climate variability.
Ice core research
Our modelling research allows us to investigate how New Zealand and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets respond to past, present and future climate change.
Glacier modelling research
We are now starting to realise how important glaciers are for economic reasons as well as indicators of climate change.
A recent study used climate models to simulate what might happen when water from melting ice sheets enters Earth’s oceans.
Over the last eight glacial/interglacial cycles CO2 varied between 180 and 280 ppm. In comparison in 2016, CO2 concentrations were 403.3 ppm globally.
Keep informed about exciting fieldwork conducted by our staff and students in New Zealand and Antarctica, new research, outreach and other activities.
PhD candidate, Wei Ji Leong is interested in using 'deep machine learning' to map deep hidden subglacial lakes around Antarctica.
Explore our glacial, geological and picturesque scenes set in breath-taking Antarctic and New Zealand landscapes.
The world will be better prepared for the worst effects of climate change due to Antarctic ice-sheet discoveries by the ‘Melting Ice & Rising Seas Team’, from Wellington’s Antarctic Research Centre in partnership with GNS Science and NIWA, was awarded the 2019 Prime Minister’s Science Prize.
After eight years overseas, Rutherford Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Holly Winton has returned to work with Antarctic Research Centre scientists on uncovering the vital information the frozen continent can tell us about Earth’s climate past.
Antarctic Research Centre has hosted an American professor for the past six months, and her research in the tropics has secrets to tell about our neighbour, Antarctica.
In 2017, the ARC became the first institute at Victoria University of Wellington to go carbon neutral through the purchase of rainforest offsets from Ekos.
EKOS
