May 29, 2026
The Department of Education, through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), has announced the results of its 2025 NCRIS Step Change and 2026 Capability Gap funding rounds.
Within those two rounds, ACCESS-NRI has received an additional $17,382,990 over the next two years for two main projects. The first will advance the development of the next-generation Earth system model ACCESS-ESM3, which underpins Australia’s future climate projections. The second project will extend ACCESS-NRI’s existing High Performance Computing (HPC) compute and data storage, and augment software transformation expertise to future-proof ACCESS models for evolving architectures.
“We are excited to announce this additional funding, which we will use to extend and enhance climate and weather modelling software for Australian researchers and to support a successful Australian coupled model submission on the global stage,” said ACCESS-NRI Director Professor Andy Hogg.
Read the NCRIS Funding announcement from the Department of Education
Read the statement from Science and Technology Australia (STA) about the Funding announcement
The following ACCESS-NRI activities have been included on this funding round:
- Australia’s Next-Generation Earth System Model (2025 Step Change Round funding).
Funding received: $14,746,373.00 for 2 years
Partner organisations: National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), CSIRO and UNSW.
This activity extends a two-year project from the 2023 NCRIS round to support the development of ACCESS-ESM3, bringing higher resolution and new functionality to the ACCESS suite. It combines ACCESS-NRI software development, NCI computational capability, and TERN observational programs to keep ACCESS at the leading edge of global climate and Earth system modelling.
ACCESS-ESM3 will integrate new climate processes, including a full carbon cycle, atmospheric chemistry, ocean-ice interaction, and improved land-surface processes informed by TERN data via the Australian Land Surface Model (CABLE). Combined with enhanced ocean carbon cycle modules, this will enable a better understanding of carbon sinks, support carbon accounting, and inform Australia’s path to net-zero.
ACCESS-ESM3 (alongside ACCESS-ESM1.6) will form the basis of Australia’s submission to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP7), which directly informs the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s next Assessment Report. This activity will also upgrade the Australian node of the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) at NCI, which hosts multiple petabytes of CMIP data used by researchers, business, and government to assess climate risk.
As the sole Southern Hemisphere nation contributing to past CMIP iterations, this submission will strengthen Australia’s reputation in global climate science and its position in international negotiations. Continued hosting of the ESGF will preserve access to international datasets for climate research, regional projections, and AI-based climate tools.
- Software Transformation, Data and Compute (2026 Capability Gap Round funding)
Funding received: $2,636,617.00 for 2 years
This funding supports the world-leading environmental and climate infrastructure underpinning Australia’s national adaptation strategy.
This activity will:
- Address shortfalls in software, data, and HPC resources that underpin ACCESS-NRI operations, including testing, deploying, and releasing models.
- Extend ACCESS-NRI’s existing HPC compute and data storage for baseline operations and Merit Allocation.
- Augment software transformation expertise to future-proof ACCESS models for evolving architectures
- Address emerging needs around managing rapid expansions in FAIR and AI-ready climate data and model output.
Beyond these two projects, ACCESS-NRI is also proud to be a partner in other two successful funding applications:
CoastRI
ACCESS-NRI is one of the 13 partners of the CoastRI Consortium, led by the Integrated Marine Observing System, which has received $58 million of investment to deliver a multi-disciplinary, national-scale approach to understanding complex coastal issues.
A media release with all the details can be found here
Australian Urban Climate Research Initiative (AUCRI)
ACCESS-NRI is a partner of this Initiative led by the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN), which received $10,797,077 from the NCRIS 2025 Step Change Round funding.