Climate science at the CSIRO is bouncing back one year after executives modelled its demise, securing new revenue streams in the Pacific and China, and looking to hire new staff.

On February 4 last year, chief executive Larry Marshall shocked staff in the country's premier research body by stating that because the question of whether the climate was changing "has been answered", it was time to deploy resources elsewhere.

At the time as many as 110 of the 140 staff in the Oceans & Atmosphere unit were considered for the axe as part of broader cuts of 350.

Amid a realisation that other agencies – from NASA to the Australian Antarctic Division – depended on CSIRO colleagues and couldn't be easily cut, and a public uproar at home and abroad, the number of redundancies was whittled back.