Australia's new chief scientist Alan Finkel has had "significant conversations" with leading researchers to ensure planned deep cuts to climate science programs by the CSIRO would not undermine the country's ability to deal with global warming.

In his first appearance in his new role before Senate estimates, Dr Finkel said he was not aware of the CSIRO's cuts until they were announced last Thursday.

Other executives, such as Rob Vertessy, head of the Bureau of Meteorology - which runs many joint programs with the CSIRO - have told estimates this week that they also had little warning about the cuts until they were made public.

Dr Finkel told senators he had been "doing as much as I can in the time available" to understand what capacity exists among other agencies such as the bureau and universities to "help facilitate continuous capacity" in climate research.

"There is no question that Australia needs a continuous and highly effective commitment to climate science, both to meet our national needs and to fulfil our international commitments," Dr Finkel said.

"Our contribution is particularly important in light of our central role in understanding the climate of the southern hemisphere."

"Our most immediate national concern must be to ensure that long-term data collections will be funded and staffed; and that the climate modelling capabilities developed by the CSIRO will continue to be made available for scientists to use and refine," Dr Finkel said.

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall, in an email sent to staff explaining the need to cut 350 full-time jobs, said the organisation needed to transfer resources away from climate monitoring to carbon mitigation and climate adaptation efforts. The job losses would be made up within two years by growth in other areas.

The cuts, though, fall particularly heavily on climate and environmental work.

Staff within two key research programs under the Ocean and Atmosphere division have been told that about 110 of 140 positions are at risk, as are a similar number with the Land and Water division.

"Our climate models are among the best in the world and our measurements honed those models to prove global climate change," Dr Marshall said in his email.

"That question has been answered, and the new question is what do we do about it, and how can we find solutions for the climate we will be living with."

Dr Finkel, although not directly critical of Dr Marshall, challenged the view that long-standing climate monitoring or modelling efforts could be allowed to cease without any impact.

"If you've got a gap in the data set, that can never be replaced retrospectively," he said.

Dr Finkel, who is understood to have worked the phones hard since Sunday, also implied that CSIRO executives had, somewhat belatedly, begun the consultations necessary to limit the impacts of the cuts.

"I am pleased that the CSIRO has this week committed to working with stakeholders to develop a transition plan to maintain this [climate] capacity," he said.

Scientists within the CSIRO and former researchers from the organisation hope that external pressure will help limit the eventual scale of the cuts or prompt Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull - who was also apparently blindsided by the CSIRO plan - to help secure an alternative home and funding for key research capabilities that might otherwise be lost.

"Next to [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel, Malcolm Turnbull is probably the best educated leader in the world about climate change," said Tony Haymet, a former director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, and a former chief of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the CSIRO.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the PM knew nothing about [the cuts]."