News

The "Arctic Science Ministerial" supports the Arctic Council and organizes ministerial meetings on Arctic topics. The 3rd Arctic Science Ministerial was organized by Iceland and Japan as an online event. AWI Director Antje Boetius and Volker Rachold, Head of the German Arctic Office, accompanied the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Education and Research, Michael Meister. Using the example of the MOSAiC expedition, Mr. Meister emphasized the urgency of international cooperation in polar research.

Back-to-back successes: The Communications and Media Relations department of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) recently won the prize for the best scientific press release of the year 2020, awarded by the Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw). The prize recognises press releases that are characterised by a high degree of professionalism (quality), are of high value in terms of the news shared, and are also scientifically significant (relevance and originality). Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the awards…

New research from a large international community of scientists predicts that sea level rise from the melting of ice could be halved this century if we meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5°C.  

Ocean risks losing its ability to absorb carbon, exacerbating global warming. New Report published: “Integrated Ocean Carbon Research: A Summary of Ocean Carbon Knowledge and a Vision for Coordinated Ocean Carbon Research and Observations for the Next Decade” with contributions from AWI scientist Dr. Judith Hauck.

AWI project APPLICATE successfully comes to an end: After more than 4 years of research, the European Union funded project APPLICATE (Advanced Prediction in Polar regions and beyond) was completed on April 30, 2021. In the project led by the AWI, a team of experts for weather and climate prediction  from over 15 research institutes examined the relationships between the Arctic and mid-latitudes. The aim of the project was to improve weather forecasts for the polar regions. More information about APPLICATE.

AWI scientist Sinhué Torres-Valdés observed the nutrient chemistry of the Arctic Ocean on an expedition as part of the PEANUTS project (Primary production driven by Escalating Arctic NUTrient fluxeS). The SCRIPPS Institution of Oceanography led the expedition in 2018. The results have now been published in a paper in the journal Nature Communications. The PEANUTS project is funded by the Changing Arctic Ocean Program (CAO).

The SCAR Krill Action Group, led by AWI biologist Prof. Bettina Meyer (SKAG), has an online meeting this week on: Evaluating change in Antarctic krill population.

When German coastal researchers head for the North Sea to measure the nutrient load in the water and, for the first time, whenever they use a scientific instrument, it is automatically recorded by an app, above all they’ll have the ingenuity of AWI sea-ice engineer Martin Schiller to thank for the new service. After taking part in a search operation in the Arctic, he developed FloeNavi, a system for navigating and locating measuring sites on sea ice. The AWI Computing Centre has since expanded the system’s most popular function into a separate app. Read…

Sponges: They are considered to be one of the most primitive forms of animal life, because they have neither locomotion organs nor a nervous system. A team around deep-sea scientist Antje Boetius has now discovered that sponges leave trails on the sea floor in the Arctic deep sea. They conclude that the animals might move actively - even if only a few centimetres per year. They are now publishing these unique findings in the journal Current Biology.

The High-Tech Forum has published its key recommendations for the future innovation strategy in Germany. Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research is a member of the central committee that advises the Federal Government on implementing the High-Tech Strategy 2025 and contributed to the report on the results. The Forum urges promoting and demanding greater courage and implementation strength in the service of the Sustainable Development Goals. It maintains that it is important to…