News

Today, in Monaco, the IPCC will present its new Special Report on the ocean and the Earth’s frozen regions. The report summarises observations of and projections on climate-based changes to ecosystems in the ocean, coastal, polar and alpine regions, describes the likely impacts of these changes for society, and presents a range of options for adaptation. Over the past three years, 104 researchers from 36 countries have contributed to the report. In the statements below, Prof Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of the IPCC’s Working Group II, and AWI Director…

The IPCC plenary in Monaco concludes today with the approval of the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SCROCC). More information.

AWI director Antje Boetius currently participates as an ocean expert in the Action Platform for Sustainable Ocean Business at the United Nations in New York.

After a decade of preparations, it’s finally time: this evening at 8:30 p.m. the German icebreaker Polarstern will depart from the Norwegian port of Tromsø. Escorted by the Russian icebreaker Akademik Fedorov, she will set sail for the Central Arctic. On board researchers will investigate a region that is virtually inaccessible in winter, and which is crucial for the global climate. They will gather urgently needed data on the interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice, as well as on the ecosystem. Thanks to the collaboration between…

How do humans affect forest fires? And what can we learn from forest fires in the past for the future of forestry? An international team of researchers led by Elisabeth Dietze, formerly at the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in Potsdam and now at the Alfred Wegener Institute - Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, now provides new answers to these questions. The research team has shown for a region in north-eastern Poland that forest fires increasingly occurred there after the end of the 18th century with the change to organised…

An expedition of superlatives: MOSAiC poses a big challenge to all international scientists involved: The drift of Polarstern will be determined by nature and can only be estimated so far in advance. To allow everyone interested to join this exciting expedition live, the MOSAiC web application will launch on the 20th of September, including all features.

The sea-ice extent in the Arctic is nearing its annual minimum at the end of the melt season in September. Only circa 3.9 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean are covered by sea ice any more, according to researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen. This is only the second time that the annual minimum has dropped below four million square kilometres since satellite measurements began in 1979.

Antje Boetius gives a lecture on 13.9.19, from 18:45 on the topic "Science of Arctic Change - What the North Pole has got to do with us" at the Institut français Bremen. All interested are welcome. Organizer is the Cosmopolitan Ladies Club Bremen.

The National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) organize the conference series "Science for Future".

Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute now, for the first time, feed the results from their global models directly into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change database. The data is particularly interesting because the underlying model, developed at the AWI, depicts the sea ice and the oceans with far greater definition than conventional methods. The results are used by climate scientists and stakeholders around the globe to determine the effects of climate change on humans and the environment.