Project background

The Australian Antarctic Division monitors the State of the Antarctic Environment. To facilitate this monitoring, the Australian Antarctic Data Centre has developed SIMR- a System for Indicator Management and Reporting. SIMR is a web-accessible database which monitors a number of environmental indicators. This system allows scientists to monitor changes in key Antarctic environmental factors.

Relationships between indicators

The State of the Environment is monitored via a number of indicators. Indicators are variables which represent key aspects of the Antarctic environment, such as atmospheric conditions, biodiversity, and human activities.

Many of these indicators are inter-related. Our analyses include identifying and modelling these relationships.

Example

• the fuel used to heat Antarctic stations is strongly influenced by the outside air temperature and wind conditions
• we have modelled this relationship using a simple feedforward neural network
• the figure below shows the actual (dotted black line) and predicted (red line) fuel usage at Mawson station
• the model shows that fuel usage has dropped by about 20% since 1995. This is due in part to efforts to reduce energy use at Antarctic stations

Model of fuel usage at Mawson station. Diagram: Ben Raymond

• the modelled relationship between outside air temperature, wind speed, and fuel usage is shown below
• for an air temperature of -15ºC, fuel usage is approximately 50500 litres/month if winds are low (8 m/s, see red arrow below)
• the fuel usage increases by approximately 7% to 54000 litres/month if winds are high (15 m/s, see blue arrow below)
• this effect is similar to the chilling effect of wind on the human body

Neural network model of fuel usage at Mawson station. The model predicts fuel usage (shown by the coloured contour lines) from wind and air temperature data. Diagram: Ben Raymond

Web page credits: Ben Raymond and Jeremy Bonnice, AAD