News

Today researchers from eleven countries will meet in Potsdam to launch a new, four-year EU project. What happens when the vast amounts of carbon in Arctic soils are released to the atmosphere?

Bremerhaven, 2nd November 2011. Prof. Antje Boetius, head of the deep-sea research group at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association and Professor of Geomicrobiology at the University of Bremen has received confirmation of the European Research Council's commitment of funds to the amount of about 3,4 million Euros. The renowned biologist from Bremen will use the funds in the coming five years to explore the deep-sea floor in the Arctic to unravel the role of the largely unknown bacterial communities living…

Today the new polar research aircraft Polar 6 will be presented in Bremerhaven, at the beginning of next week the Basler BT-67 will take off to the Antarctic. Its first job there will be to carry out measurements of the ice crust, which is up to several kilometres thick.

On Friday, 28 October 2011 the research icebreaker Polarstern sets off on its 28th Antarctic expedition. Over 200 scientists and technicians from research institutions in 14 countries will take part in the five expedition legs.

A distance of around 14,000 kilometres separates Greenland from Antarctica. Nevertheless, using climate data from Antarctic ice cores, an international team of researchers succeeded in reconstructing a curve for Greenland temperature changes that goes back 800,000 years into the past, thus enabling completely new insights into the climate history of Greenland and the North Atlantic.

On the 14th of October Thomas Rachel, the German parliamentary State Secretary for the Federal Minister of Education and Research, opened the exhibition „Vivid Exhibition – Focuses of the russo-german collaboration in the field of marine and polar research“ at the State University of St.Petersburg. The touring exhibition is part of the Russo-German year of Education, Science and Innovation 2011/2012 and will visit Berlin, Munich and Bonn within the next year. The exhibition is part of the close co-operation between Germany and Russia in the fields of…

In the central Arctic the proportion of old, thick sea ice has declined significantly. Instead, the ice cover now largely consists of thin, one-year-old floes. This is one of the results that scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association brought back from the 26th Arctic expedition of the research vessel Polarstern.

A group of leading climate research organisations from eight European countries established the European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA) in the European Parliament yesterday. Prof. Dr. Karin Lochte, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, signed the cooperation agreement on behalf of all research centres of the Helmholtz Association that conduct climate research.

An international team of scientists has unravelled how the first ozone hole over the Arctic formed last spring. A comprehensive analysis of the unusually high ozone depletion in March/April 2011 has now been published in advance in the online issue of the journal “Nature”.

In a stringent selection procedure the Helmholtz Association has chosen 20 junior scientists, who can now set up their own research group at one of the 17 Helmholtz centres. Three of the approved applications came from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, which thus achieved above average success.