The role of the Earth Systems and Climate Change (ESCC) Hub was to ensure that Australia’s policies and management decisions were effectively informed by Earth systems and climate change science. This was achieved by building a national partnership, with world-leading capability in multi-disciplinary Earth system science and modelling that provided Earth system and climate information in support of a productive and resilient Australia.

In the six years that the ESCC Hub was active, it held partnerships with Australia’s leading Earth systems and climate change research institutions:

• CSIRO
• Bureau of Meteorology
• University of New South Wales
• Australian National University
• Monash University
• University of Melbourne
• University of Tasmania.

The ESCC hub was hosted by CSIRO and was one of six hubs supported by funding through the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (NESP), which is the Australian Government’s long-term commitment to environment and climate research.

ESCC’s research priorities were to:

• Improve understanding of past and current climate
• Improve understanding of how the climate may change in the future
• Build the utility of climate change information.

ESCC’s historical research portfolio contains a range of projects integrated across land, ocean and atmospheric research. ESCC used modelling, simulations, projections and analyses of observations to expand their understanding of Australia’s climate drivers.

The Hub worked with the Australian financial services sector, including retail banks, insurers/reinsurers and fund managers to identify their needs and to develop and deliver a preliminary suite of data and information products, and services, and capacity development support tailored to meet these needs. The initial focus was for the outputs to inform sectoral physical climate change impact and risk assessments, at both the national and sub-national scale, and climate-related financial disclosures.