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A new study in the prestigious journal Science Advances shows that stress from rising water temperatures reduces ability of corals to adapt to ocean acidification.

The goal of the international Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is to create a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean. In the course of revising the proposal to establish a Marine Protected Area in the Weddell Sea, researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute have also updated the fact sheet and short video about this proposal. The two publications illustrate why the Weddell Sea must be protected. 

Driving across ice in a truck or snowcat is a dangerous undertaking. Especially since climate change means that the ice conditions are always unpredictable. But in the Arctic, it’s often the only way to reach your destination. With a new navigation system, known as “TransIce Nav”, Alexandra Zuhr and Tabea Rettelbach want to make journeys like this much safer in future. The two Potsdam-based researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), took the first prize in the prestigious European “Copernicus…

The new Helmholtz research program "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future" was started with a digital kick-off meeting. AWI Director Antje Boetius opened the meeting in 2019/2020, Vice President of the Earth and Environment Research Area.The new research program coordinates the scientific work of seven Helmholtz research centers in the field of "Earth and Environment". The digital kick-off event is available online.

During glacial periods, icebergs from Antarctica drifted much further north than they do today. An international team led by Cardiff University and which included the AWI has now revealed how this was possible, and what consequences it had for the ocean. Their study found that the transport of frozen freshwater had effects in regions as far away as the Northern Hemisphere and the deep Atlantic. The impacts on the evolution of climate at that time are subject of on-going research. 

In the future, the Antarctic could become a greener place and be colonised by new species. At the same time, some species will likely disappear. 25 researchers recently presented these and many other findings in a major international project, in which they analysed hundreds of articles on the Antarctic published in the past ten years. By doing so, the team have provided an exceptionally comprehensive assessment of the status quo and future of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean that surrounds it. 

The alga Vaucheria velutina has been chosen “Alga of the Year 2021”. The Phycology Section of the German Society for Plant Sciences recently elected this introduced species “due to its sudden dominance and the unforeseeable ecological impacts” that its novel appearance in the northern Wadden Sea could entail. Mud gets trapped in the tube-like filaments of this alga, while other species of Vaucheria only thrive in salt marshes. As a result, lugworm burrows become clogged, and this eventually is transforming the Wadden Sea ecosystem. Coastal scientist Prof…

Until recently, what we knew about the lives of baleen whales in the Southern Ocean was chiefly based on research conducted during the Antarctic summer. The reason: in the winter, there were virtually no biologists on site to watch for the animals. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have now used permanently installed underwater microphones, which have been recording for the past nine years, to successfully gather and analyse whale observation data from the Weddell Sea. The audio recordings…

This year, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Neumayer Station III will be exclusively supplied by sea. The research vessel Polarstern will transport– as usual – materials and fuel to the Antarctic. However, due to the coronavirus, this season all the staff who will work at the station will also travel to the Southern Continent by ship.  

“Making theatre in a time of global crisis” - that was the title of the international online conference of the Open University of Cyprus. AWI Director Antje Boetius gave a keynote on the subject of “The tragedy of climate change, the utopia of the ark and how we are all in this play”. The full conference is available online.