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Five weeks after setting sail from Tromsø, Norway, the Alfred Wegener Institute's research vessel Polarstern makes a stop at the northernmost point on Earth. Here, too, the international team of researchers is investigating the coupling between sea ice, the ocean and its life, including within the deep sea. So far, the Arcwatch-1 expedition, launched on August 3, 2023, has delivered some surprising discoveries: For example, 2023 is characterized by unusual ice drift, which is affecting communities under the ice. In addition, the team has discovered an…

The Elbe transports contaminants, stemming from industry, agriculture, and water treatment plants, to Germany’s North Sea coast. Their concentrations vary due to inlets found along the course of the river, but also due to degradation and sedimentation processes in the river and its estuary. Throughout this summer, experts from various Helmholtz Centres used a multi-system approach to investigate how the concentration and composition of the environmental chemicals, nano- and microplastic particles, nutrients and climate gases found in the river change on…

Increasingly, marine organisms from all over the world are being carried into German coastal waters by humans, whose diversity and ecology they can fundamentally change. For example, the German North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts are now characterized by non-indigenous marine organisms. Their occurrence and rate of introduction is used as an international assessment criterion for the ecological status of marine areas. In cooperation with the Schleswig-Holstein State Office for the Environment, the AWI North Sea Office has compiled an overview of all known…

Many of the models used to make climate projections are unable to dynamically reflect permafrost. A new study involving experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute has for the first time applied an extensive ensemble of 17 climate models to quantify how said models portray permafrost in warm climates. Drawing on a comparison of models for a warm period during the mid-Pliocene roughly three million years ago, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the researchers conclude that the near-surface permafrost extent was less than 10…

Due to intensifying sea-ice melting in the Arctic, sunlight is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the ocean. Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behaviour – especially how the tiny organisms rise and fall within the water column. As an international team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now shown, in the future this could lead to more frequent food shortages for the zooplankton, and to negative effects for larger species including seals and whales. The study was just released in…

The multidisciplinary project REMARCO ("Remediation, Management, Monitoring and Cooperation addressing North Sea UXO") started on the 16th/17th of August with a kick-off meeting. 35 researchers from 10 partner institutions as well as advisors from ministries, authorities and administration met at the AWI in Bremerhaven. With the aim of protecting marine ecosystems, the AWI-led project deals, for example, with war wrecks and sea mines in the North Sea. It builds on the results of the "North Sea Wrecks" project.

During the last Antarctic season, British Polarstern expedition members Dr. Robert D. Larter and Dr. Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) discovered a new landmark in the Southern Ocean with one of the Polarstern helicopters. This cape is named in honour of the late AWI geologist Christian Hass.

How are cold-water corals responding to the changing environmental conditions produced by climate change? When it comes to this question, to date, experiments have exclusively focused on mature cold-water corals. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) recently explored the effects on corals at various younger developmental stages. What they found: Young and mature animals respond very differently to negative environmental influences. This aspect, they argue, urgently needs to be reflected in future…

Arctic cod is the most abundant fish in the Arctic Ocean. It is an important food source for Arctic marine mammals and plays an important role in the self-sufficiency of the Inuit. An international study team, including researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, has now evaluated the most important scientific work on Arctic cod of the past decades. The conclusion: Above all, the already advanced decline in arctic sea ice cover as a result of man-made climate change could have a significant impact on the future distribution of the species. The study…

An international team of ice core researchers has reached bedrock while drilling through 2670 m thick ice in the EGRIP camp on the North Greenland Ice Sheet. This is the first time researchers have drilled a deep ice core through an ice stream. The EGRIP (East Greenland Ice core Project) is led by the Danish Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and many researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have participated in the drilling over the past seven years.