News

On June 11th, Prof Dr Victor Smetacek, scientist at the 'Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research' (AWI) will be presented with the Manley-Bendall medal for his "work in the field of marine biology, as an expert on plankton and for his worldwide reputation" by the Oceanographic Institute in Paris

Secrets of the Earth’s past climate locked in a three-kilometre long Antarctic ice core are revealed this week in the journal Nature. The core from Dome C, high on East Antarctica’s plateau, contains snowfall from the last 740,000 years and is by far the oldest continuous climate record obtained from ice cores so far.

Biologists investigated ecosystem and its changes
After more than seven months, the German research vessel "Polarstern" returned to Bremerhaven on June 2nd from its 21st Antarctic expedition.

An international team of scientists is currently investigating a haze layer that spreads over the Arctic each spring. This layer of air contains aerosols whose expansion in the otherwise clean Arctic atmosphere leads to a level of pollution that usually occurs only over industrial areas. One of the most important questions arising is whether or not this might have direct or indirect effects on the climate.
Aerosols are air-suspended particles that directly influence climate through absorption or reflection of solar radiation. In addition, they can act…

For his scientific contributions to polar research and his commitment towards cooperation with Russia, Professor Jörn Thiede, director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Saint-Petersburg State University on May 12, 2004.

In the past six weeks scientists aboard the research vessel “Polarstern“ have been searching for krill in the previously scarcely investigated Lazarev Sea. The expedition ended today in Cape Town. As a food source for whales, seals, penguins and seabirds, krill takes a key role within this ecosystem of the Antarctic. Very little is known about the distribution, biology, population dynamics and physiology of these shrimp-like crustaceans, either from this ocean region or about the time period between the Antarctic autumn and winter. The expedition was to…

In the world's oceans, considerably more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than previously suggested can be transported to the deep sea. This was pointed out in an article authored by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, and the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche in France in the recent issue of the scientific journal Nature (see below). In their work, the scientists show that water-soluble sugar molecules produced by algae form particles in the process of aggregation. These…

Researchers have been successful in identifying the relationship between a reduction of arctic ozone and climate changes. Current observations show that the arctic ozone layer reacts much more sensitively to climate changes than predicted from earlier model calculations. A study published in “Geophysical Research Letters” (see below) demonstrates that, within the last 40 years, climate conditions in the stratosphere have facilitated the ozone decline in the Arctic. After analysis of ozone measurements from the past 12 years, researchers were able to…

Within the framework of the expedition ‘CryoVex 2004’ the aircraft ‘Polar 4’, operated by the Foundation Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), is on a 3 week Arctic trip to conduct ice surveys. The measurements are to be used in preparation for a mission by the European space satellite ‘CryoSat’ which will survey the polar ice caps and sea ice beginning November 2004. The satellite is to determine whether ice recedes or increases in response to global climate change.

An international team of scientists that recently carried out an experiment in the South Atlantic on board RV „Polarstern“ of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research has found that an algal bloom induced by iron fertilisation transported carbon dioxide to the deep ocean. The bloom also stimulated growth of zooplankton grazers such as copepods and krill that form the basis of food chains leading to fish stocks of commercial importance such as sardine and herring but also whales.