CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research
former Australian government funded science research organisation
CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research (DAR) (1983–2005) was a research section (Division) of the CSIRO, Australia's largest government-supported science research agency. In 2005 the Division was merged with CSIRO Marine Research to form CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research.
Description and formation
The CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research (abbreviation within CSIRO: DAR) was a Division of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific Industrial and Research Organisation), Australia's national science research agency, in existence from 1983 to 2005. It was formed as a merger between the pre-existing Divisions of Atmospheric Physics and Cloud Physics, which between them had other forerunners including the Division of Meteorological Physics, Radiophysics, and the CSIRO Upper Atmosphere Section. It ceased to exist as a named entity (although its work was carried on) in 2005 when it merged with CSIRO Marine Research under the new name CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. Its past activities are extensively documented in a 1998 publication by J. Garratt et al. The Division's climate modelling activities, 1981 to 2006, are described here. A 2026 ABC News article describes the 50-year air sampling program at Cape Grim, Tasmania, conducted by the Division jointly with the Bureau of Meteorology, and its significance.
Location
Its facilities were located at Aspendale, Victoria and Canberra, ACT (CSIRO Black Mountain and Gungahlin sites).
Staffing and budget
According to figures on the Division's website from June 1996, at that date the Division employed 145 science and support staff across its three locations.
“CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research” enters the record as former Australian government funded science research organisation. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what CSIRO, Division and Atmospheric can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, CSIRO, Division and Atmospheric provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q139571797. Authority coordinates are -38.025, 145.102. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2005, 1998 and 1981.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research primary sources, CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research archive and CSIRO research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.