Integrated Marine Observing System - IMOS

Professor Moninya Roughan from the University of New South Wales studies the circulation and dynamics of the East Australian Current, and how the ocean is warming.

NCRIS-funded research infrastructure has been fundamental to Moninya’s research.

IMOS is a national program that helps monitor and understand ocean conditions with a range of equipment and Moninya leads the the IMOS NSW Moorings sub-Facility. These moorings provide long-term time series of ocean temperature and currents.

More recently Moninya has led the IMOS Fishing Vessels as Ships of Opportunity sub-Facility called FishSOOP. FishSOOP partners with the commercial fishing industry to collect ocean temperature data from their fishing vessels operating around the country to help improve our understanding of Australia’s changing oceans.

Moninya’s research uses the data collected from a range of IMOS equipment as well as ocean measurements collected on voyages aboard CSIRO’s Marine National Facility – the research vessel (RV) Investigator.

Using the ocean data, Moninya runs ocean modelling programs models from the ACCESS-NRI using the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) supercomputers, to predict future ocean conditions.

The ocean modelling is helping researchers and decision-makers better understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change on Australia's marine environment.

This work is made possible thanks to support from the Australian Government Department of Education’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).


CSIRO National Computational Infrastructure