News

A major new project will help benchmark biodiversity change in the Arctic Ocean and guide conservation efforts by identifying unique species and assessing their extinction risk. The research led by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of East Anglia is now published in PLOS Biology, futher informations can be found in this UAE's press release.

The Alfred Wegener Institute and the MOSAiC research expedition were awarded the Arctic Circle Prize on Saturday, 15 October 2022 in Reykjavik. With the prize, the international organisation Arctic Circle recognises extraordinary contributions to securing a sustainable and prosperous future in the Arctic. This is the third time the prize has been awarded since 2016, previous winners being Ban Ki-moon (then Secretary General of the United Nations) and John Kerry (former US Secretary of State and US Chair of the Arctic Council).

AWI Director Antje Boetius participated in the plenary session Urgent messages from global science leaders at the Arctic Circle Assembly 2022 in Reykjavík yesterday. In the session, she pointed to the need for international action to avoid climate tipping points. The Arctic, she said, is the climate hotspot with global consequences. Scientific observations and assessments of this region are part of the solution. Other panel participants included Roberta Marinelli (NSF) and Dame Jane Francis (BAS). The event was moderated by IASC President Henry Burgess.

As a result of global warming, permafrost regions around the world are thawing now. As they do, climate-relevant greenhouse gases containing carbon (carbon dioxide, methane) and nitrogen (nitrous oxide) can be released from the soil and into the atmosphere. Accordingly, having data on the stored amounts of both elements that are as accurate as possible is essential to making good climate forecasts. Whereas substantial research has been conducted on the carbon reservoirs in permafrost, we still know comparatively little about nitrogen. A team of experts…

The German Arctic Office has compiled an analysis on the Security Policy in the Arctic, including contributions from the German Foreign Office, the German Ministry of Defense, and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. With climate change, valuable resources are becoming accessible in the Arctic, and new shipping routes are opening up. This is rapidly changing the geopolitical situation, and interstate conflicts in the Arctic may arise. The new publication provides an outline as well as an outlook of the relevant topics here.

Over the past 200 years, our planet’s oceans have absorbed more than a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As a result, their acidity has increased by nearly 30 percent their acidity has increased by nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In this regard, the water’s pH value isn’t constant; it varies both seasonally and regionally. The lowest values naturally occur in winter. But that could soon change, since they could be shifted to the summer by climate change, as an international team including…

Mesoscale ocean eddies are small, short-lived phenomena that effectively influence ocean properties like temperature, velocity, and salinity.  The effects of eddies are integral to ocean circulation, the uptake of heat and carbon at depth, gas exchange with the atmosphere, and the transport of nutrients. In a new study, a research team led by Alfred Wegener Institute scientists investigated what long-term impact anthropogenic climate change will have on ocean eddies and their far-reaching effects. Using climate model simulations, the study shows how…

On 9 August 2022, eleven researchers from seven countries left Bremerhaven, bound for the Arctic. On board the research ship Heincke, the RISING expedition – an initiative of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group ARctic JELlies (ARJEL) at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) – had begun. The international team included experts from the AWI, GEOMAR and the University of Bergen. Their goal: to survey jellyfish along a poleward oriented line of latitude: from northern Norway, through the Barents Sea to the…

Over the past several decades, the Arctic has warmed much faster than the rest of the world. With consequences for its sea ice. In order to gauge the thickness of ice masses in the North Pole region, scientists chiefly rely on satellites. But this method proves problematic in the summer, when melting processes on the ice’s surface make it difficult to apply. An international team of researchers including experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute has now developed a method that, for the first time, makes it possible to identify changes in the Arctic…

ICYMARE, a conference organised by and for young marine scientists, will take place in Bremerhaven from 13-16 September. Organized entirely by volunteers, the international meeting offers the opportunity to exchange ideas with other young researchers and to build up a network at an early stage. ICYMARE is an event of the Bremen Society for Natural Sciences and will take place at the University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven and the AWI – with many contributions from AWI young researchers.