Reef team to unlock climate change clues

Academics from around the world will take part in research on the Great Barrier Reef. Photo / Queensland Tourism

To Australians and diving aficionados everywhere it's a natural wonder.

But beneath the Great Barrier Reef's beauty, a team of scientists believe, lies the key to uncovering the long-term history of climate change.

Academics from across the globe will set off from the north Queensland city of Townsville next week on a 45-day journey they hope will provide insight into climate change stretching back to the last ice age.

The expedition is funded by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme, made up of scientific funding from the United States, Europe, Japan and several smaller partners, including Australia.

Expedition co-chief scientist Dr Jody Webster, from Sydney University, said the team would drill for samples of fossilised reefs, which would then be used to answer questions about historic ice shelf melting and its effect on sea levels as well as on reefs.

"We will learn an incredible amount, this will be truly exciting, groundbreaking stuff, I believe," Dr Webster said.

"The data from this expedition will have implications for scientists working in a range of different fields."

He said the information gathered would be particularly useful for future modelling on the effects of global warming.

"There is a lot of uncertainty right now about how stable the ice sheets are and one of the ways we can hopefully prove our estimates of that is to go back into the past and see how those ice sheets have behaved."

Dr Webster said drilling expeditions in other locations had shown sea level rises of 15 to 20 metres over 300 to 500 years during the last period of deglaciation (glacial melting).

The samples could also be used to determine the past behaviour of El Nino and help predict the impact of global warming on the weather pattern.

The expedition's samples will be taken to Germany where the drill cores will be split and sent to laboratories in several countries.

- AAP