The SCAR-programme EBA (2004-13) will address the impacts of climate change on species biodiversity, evolutionary adaptations and depletion of marine fisheries on community dynamics in the Southern Ocean. A better understanding of the effect of such changes will be obtained by investigating the acclimatory responses to high latitudes. It will contribute to development of a baseline understanding of sensitive ecosystems.

Ice cores tell us how climate and atmospheric composition have varied in the past. IPICS will develop international plans for new projects on timescales from 2000 to over a million years. A focus in IPY will be on starting a core to bedrock in Greenland that aims to show us how the climate and ice sheet responded during the last warm interglacial period on Earth.

The ACE programme aims to facilitate research in the broad area of Antarctic climate evolution. The programme will link geophysical surveys and geological studies on and around the Antarctic continent with ice-sheet and climate modelling studies. These studies are designed to investigate climate and ice sheet behaviour in both the recent and distant geologic past, including times when global temperature was several degrees warmer than today.

CAML will investigate the distribution and abundance of Antarctic marine biodiversity, how it will be affected by climate change and how climate change will affect the ecosystem and the planet. Its key focus is a major ship based research programme in the austral summer of 2007-2008. Scientists from 30 countries and 50 institutions will collate data providing a robust benchmark against which future change can be measured.