News

The Arctic Ocean in summer will very likely be ice free before 2050, at least temporally. The efficacy of climate-protection measures will determine how often and for how long. These are the results of a new research study involving 21 research institutes from around the world including the Alfred Wegener Institute, coordinated by Dirk Notz from the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Why are emissions of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrogen so high outside the vegetation periods in permafrost regions? How do the carbon and nitrogen cycles and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions differ between the vegetation period and outside of it? And why do existing models of methane fluxes fail outside the vegetation period? Dr Claire Treat wants to provide answers to these questions with the FluxWin junior research group, which she is establishing and leading at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research…

Caught in the glare of Polarstern’s spotlights, a curious mother polar bear and her cub explore the MOSAiC ice camp – with this image Esther Horvath, a photographer and photo editor at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), won the World Press Photo Award for an individual picture in the category “Environment”, as the World Press Photo Foundation announced on the evening of 16 April.

Ready for a coffee break? In the “Coffee Break” format, participants of the MOSAiC expedition report live on the Instagram platform on their experiences in the Central Arctic.

Disposable gloves and disposable suits to combat the corona pandemic: AWI employee Ullrich Knoll has handed over 28,000 disposable gloves to the Bremerhaven fire brigade. Since laboratory operations at the Alfred Wegener Institute are reduced, the available protective equipment is donated to facilities in Bremerhaven.

An international team of researchers led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, have now provided a new and unprecedented perspective on the climate history of Antarctica. In a sediment core collected in the Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica, in February 2017, the team discovered pristinely preserved forest soil from the Cretaceous, including a wealth of plant pollen and spores and a dense network of roots. These plant remains confirm that, roughly 90 million years ago, the coast of West Antarctica…

Your computer is now a portal to the North Pole: Explore one of the most mysterious regions on Earth from the comfort of your own home with a new massive open online course (MOOC) featuring short lectures by researchers about their work, stunning footage from the icebreakers Polarstern and Akademik Fedorov, 360° videos and more. More than three dozen MOSAiC scientists and Arctic experts summarize the core of their research during the MOSAiC expedition. The course is offered through the platform Coursera, and also viewable on YouTube.

Five years of the student laboratory OPENSEA at the AWI’s Helgoland facilities: since 2014, Germany’s only island in the open sea has given interested school classes the opportunity to actively explore marine flora and fauna at a student laboratory. Six years ago, the first group of schoolchildren visited the AWI Helgoland to collect and analyse samples from the mudflats. The children were supported by a small team from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). 

Working in the Arctic Fram Strait, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have found microplastic throughout the water column with particularly high concentrations at the ocean floor. Using model-based simulations, they have also found an explanation for this high level of pollution. According to their findings, the two main ocean currents in Fram Strait transport the microscopically small plastic particles into the region between Greenland and Spitsbergen from both the Arctic and the North…

Thanks to a new algorithm, researchers at the AWI can now use satellite data to determine in which parts of the ocean certain types of phytoplankton are dominant. In addition, they can identify toxic algal blooms and assess the effects of global warming on marine plankton, allowing them to draw conclusions regarding water quality and the ramifications for the fishing industry.