Event description

Royal Society of Tasmania AGM and Lecture

4.00 pm Thursday 6 March 2025, Royal Yacht of Tasmania, Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay

Please join us for a complimentary drink from 3.45 pm before the formalities begin.
All RST members and guests are welcome. Admission is free.

AGM

The RST AGM will include election of Office Bearers and Council members for 2025 and consideration of changes to the Rules of the RST.

Lecture

A lecture by Professor Nathan Bindoff entitled, The Role of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in the Climate System will follow the AGM.

The Southern Ocean and Antarctica are changing rapidly. New discoveries and understandings are pointing to a growing role of the Southern Ocean in our changing climate. The loss of mass by Antarctica, the slowing of the southern hemisphere over-turning circulation and the remarkable loss of winter sea-ice in the last two years will be dicussed. There is an urgent need to understand these changes and track the human contributions to these changes, to support policy makers in this critical decade.

Professor Bindoff has advanced our knowledge of how the global oceans are warming and losing oxygen, and how the changing patterns of salinity reflect an accelerating water cycle. This warming, oxygen loss, and salinity change has the clear fingerprint of human activity through increasing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. He was the first to document these ocean changes and show their connection to human influence in the climate system. Professor Bindoff has provided outstanding leadership in the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a lead author on several assessment reports that are informing world leaders on climate policy.

Amongst his numerous awards, Professor Bindoff received the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for his contribution to the IPCC. In 2024 Professor Bindoff received an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship which is considered one of Australia's most prestigeous scientific awards.