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The centre, which has the nifty acronym CSHOR (seashore), is financially supported by China’s largest marine science research institute, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM).

The full funding commitment for CSHOR is $20 million over 10 years, half of which will come from China. Two Australian universities, Tasmania and New South Wales, are also contributors, offering shared facilities and personnel.

The funding is modest, but the important point is the international connection, which will offer some protection against any further CSIRO funding cuts.

This is just what was needed after CSIRO’s decision early last year to cut climate research resources on grounds that it needed those resources to respond to a government drive for commercially-driven science.

Within a week of the decision’s announcement, thousands of climate scientists from around the world had put their names to a letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, pointing out the critical importance of CSIRO’s multi-decadal investigation of Southern Hemisphere climate…….

It will be fascinating to see how CSHOR’s Chinese connection develops over time. Qingdao, on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula roughly halfway between Beijing and Shanghai, is a major Chinese port city with a long maritime history

QNLM is a brand-new institution being installed there by national, provincial and city governments. The aim is to make it a world-leading marine science institution, and given its financial and other resources (its workforce is already as big as CSIRO’s) that seems very likely.

The blend of QNLM resources and CSIRO’s decades of marine science experience looks propitious for both institutions. China is investing heavily in doing marine science, and CSHOR offers it a lot of hard-earned knowledge about ocean processes in southern regions.

CSHOR is a recognition by both governments of the fundamental importance of the global ocean, which covers more than 70 per cent of Earth’s surface, in Earth’s climate system. It takes up a quarter of our excess carbon dioxide from the air and over 90 per cent of excess heat energy.

Most of the world’s ocean waters are in the Southern Hemisphere, where fierce westerly winds drive huge currents which power the world’s ocean circulation. For marine scientists, the global action is here.

Both China and Australia are directly affected by two climate processes: the El Nino — Southern Oscillation, originating in the tropical Pacific, and an Indian Ocean phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole. These will be a key focus of the new centre’s work…….

— the arrival of the Climate Science Centre and CSHOR seems just what’s needed to put CSIRO back in its world-leading position in Southern Hemisphere climate science.

Another positive development: as it happens, the two Australian universities supporting CSHOR (NSW and Tasmania) have both engaged the expert services of John Church. So maybe, after all the trauma of 2016, things might turn out better than ever. Who would have thought it?

Peter Boyer, who began his journalism career at the Mercury, has written about climate for many years. http://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/talking-point-science-is-the-winner-from-alliance/news-story/ed8fa438cb6ac1d32733ebfbfa4c19c4