News

What impact does macroalgae cultivation for sustainable packaging production have on the environment? A research project titled "Life cycle assessment of land-based seaweed cultivation for packaging material" is dedicated to this topic, which was developed in cooperation with the AWI, the University of Latvia, Institute for Microbiology and Biotechnology and the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. The project aims to provide vital data on the enviromental impact of this study using a Life Cycle Analysis (LVA). To the original press release

Angelika Humbert from AWI and Tilman Bucher from DLR took the third place in the category "Jury Award" at the Helmholtz Imaging Contest 2023. The winners were announced during the award ceremony on June 15th at the third Annual Helmholtz Imaging Conference. The awarded photo was taken with a MACS camera on the 79°N Glacier, developed by DLR-OS. The prize, which is worth 600 euros, is donated by Beiersdorf. More information

During a 10-day guest research visit, the Traversing European Coastlines team sampled soil, sediments, shallow water and aerosols at the coastal site of Sylt. The AWI site was one of 46 planned stations in 22 different countries where the TREC team from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL for short) is collecting samples and environmental data at land-sea interfaces to assess the response of different organisms to natural and man-made environmental factors.

In 2003, AWI and the French polar research institute Paul-Émile Victor merged their stations Koldewey and Rabot on Svalbard to form the AWIPEV base. Yesterday, the anniversary of the research cooperation was celebrated together at the French Embassy in Berlin. In addition to French Ambassador François Delattre, IPEV Director Yan Ropert-Coudert and AWI Director Antje Boetius also attended the event. Both signed a declaration to continue the Franco-German cooperation in the future. More info

The “Germany-Iceland Clean Energy Summit” will be held in Berlin on June 12th. The summit brings together government officials, businesses and civil society groups from Iceland and Germany to discuss how international cooperation can be increased to achieve climate goals. Besides the German federal minister for economics and climate protection Robert Habeck, AWI director Antje Boetius will also take part in a discussion. She will speak about the future challenges and opportunities that will arise related to the climate. More information

This year's World Oceans Day is themed: Planet Ocean - Tides are changing. The central celebration will take place at the United Nations in New York from 10:00 local time (16:00 CEST). Prof. Dr Hans-Otto Pörtner, biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute and Co-Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will give the keynote lecture "Ocean x Climate" at 11:40 local time (17:40 CEST).

A successful cooperation in international polar research celebrates its 20th anniversary. In 2003, the German Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and the French Polar Research Institute Paul-Émile Victor (IPEV) merged their stations Koldewey and Rabot on Svalbard to form the AWIPEV base. Since then, scientists from both countries have jointly been conducting research there on the effects of climate change in the Arctic as part of the Ny-Ålesund research station coordinated by Norway. The anniversary of the successful partnership will be celebrated on June 14,…

Topping-out ceremony for the new AWI building for seawater circuits: The AWI has several distributed aquarium facilities in the Bremerhaven urban area. These will now be bundled together with a new building. The building, which will cover a good 1000 square meters, will contain three self-contained circulation systems, each with about 20 cubic meters of seawater. These reflect the Polar Sea, North Atlantic and North Sea habitats to be studied. Each circulation system can be individually tempered between -2 °C and +20 °C. Commissioning is planned for…

More than 280 scientists from all over the world are meeting in Bremerhaven for the "International Symposium on Sea Ice". Their common goal is to exchange research methods and results on the topic of sea ice and snow in the Arctic and Antarctic. The conference will run until June 9. More info.

In response to climate change, the mean sea surface temperature has risen substantially. Yet some ocean regions like the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica have hardly warmed at all, or even grown slightly cooler, over the past 40 years. A team of experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has now succeeded in confirming that this phenomenon is only a temporary state at the beginning of an extremely long-term climate change, in the course of which precisely those areas that are cooler today will warm…