News

Sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) have developed a new method that allows them for the first time to efficiently determine the distribution and thickness of what researchers call a sub-ice platelet layer. This several metre thick layer of delicate ice crystals is predominantly found beneath coastal Antarctic sea ice, and at present knowledge about its spatial distribution is very limited. This phenomenon, which is also known as platelet ice, is of central importance in the coastal regions of the Antarctic, influencing sea ice…

The Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM ("Regionale Klimaänderungen"/Regional Climcate Change), coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, is one of 190 featured exhibitors at the 5th "Woche der Umwelt" (Week of the Environment) - an environmental exhibition of the Federal President and the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU). The event will take place on 7 and 8 June 2016 in Berlin's Schloss Bellevue and presents the topic "Environmental Protection" with its associated economic and social chances to thousands of invited guests.

According to estimates, Alaska's thawing permafrost soils cost the USA several 100 million dollars every decade – primarily because airports, roads, pipelines and settlements require relocation as a result of sinking ground and eroding river banks. An international team of researchers has now measured riverbank erosion rates, which exceed all previous records, along the Itkillik River in Alaska's north. In a stretch of land where the ground contains a particularly large quantity of ice the Itkillik River eats into the river bank at 19 metres per year,…

Since January 2014 two snow depth buoys deliver continuously information about the snow depth on Antarctic sea ice. During this time they traveled 5200 kilometres and each took more than 17500 measurements along the route.

Today the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Institute for Environmental Physics of the University Bremen officially open their Palau Atmospheric Observatory at the Campus of the Palau Community College (PCC). The new observatory is part of the European climate research project StratoClim, a consortium of 28 European research organisations led by AWI, and is operated in close collaboration with the PCC.

The construction work on the new annexe of the AWI Potsdam (Telegrafenberg) is right on schedule. AWI's construction project manager Elke Meißner announced this good news at the official topping-out ceremony in Potsdam yesterday.

The Biological Institute Helgoland of the Alfred Wegner Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has been breeding lobsters for years and has developed a special hatchery system. The animals and their habitats have been extensively investigated.

Micro-plastic particles pose a risk not only to sea birds, whales and organisms at the bottom of the sea. In two new studies, scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute Hemholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) show that plastic waste is also eaten by nautili as well as North and Baltic Sea fish such as cod and mackerel.

Researchers have chosen one of the most important algae of the Arctic, the Melosira arctica, as Alga of the Year. The scientists are planning to use it to study the impact of climate change. "Because so far, nobody can predict whether the Melosira will be a victim or a beneficiary of the melting sea ice, and so far nobody knows why it is the most productive alga in this inhospitable world," says biologist Dr Klaus Valentin of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). He is a member of the Phycology Section of the…

When the temperatures at the North Pole went to just above zero degrees Celsius at the end of December, not only the relatively warm temperatures of this region were unusual. The availability of weather data is not for granted but owed to the use of snow buoys, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).