News

Today scientists at the Center for Scientific Diving of the Biological Institute Helgoland start a project that is unique thus far for the North Sea: “MarGate”, an innovative underwater experimental field. In future, scientists want to acquire marine biology data with a high resolution in terms of time and space there by means of state-of-the-art sensor technologies. These data will then be available online via the Internet.

Hydraulic lifting devices prevent Neumayer Station III from sinking in the ice. The snow and ice surface in the Antarctic grows continuously so the research station has to be raised annually. The construction concept and technology prove effective right from the beginning.

The Institute established the organisation “Friends of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research” in 2009. All those interested can obtain information and support research financially and morally in the future.

On 26 January 2010 the research vessel Polarstern docked in Wellington, New Zealand for the first time. This marked the end of the two-month leg of an expedition with a marine geological focus that started in Punta Arenas, Chile. Representatives of the research community and the political sphere took advantage of the short stop in the port to share experiences and ideas and intensify the good cooperation within the framework of a reception on board.

The first comprehensive review of the state of Antarctica’s climate and its relationship to the global climate system is published this week by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

The Arctic regions are essential for the global climate and for the ecology of the oceans. Their research is crucial to reconstruct former climate systems and to predict future climate development. German and Russian researchers cooperate closely for this purpose. This cooperation has an institutionalized framework since ten years: the Otto Schmidt Laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Researchers from Kiel and Bremerhaven and representatives from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research receive prestigious Russian awards during today’s…

Reseach aircraft Polar 5, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, took off towards Antarctica on Thursday November 12th. Polar 5 will be used in three research programmes in the season 2009/10 and it will logistically support the established Antarctic flight network DROMLAN (Dronning Maud Land Air Network) as well as various field programmes. Including the flight towards Antarctica and back, Polar 5 will probably absolve around 375 flying hours in connection with the expedition.

The earth is currently subject to profound climate change. However, the effects can regionally be highly different. How will global changes impact in detail on the regional scale? In which way will anthropogenic influence and natural climate change affect each other? On which knowledge base can regions react to the expected changes by means of appropriate climate adaptation and mitigation strategies? Eight research centres of the Helmholtz Association focus their competences in the Helmholtz network Regional Climate Change (“Regionale Klimaänderungen”:…

Geoscientists have succeeded in reconstructing the ice conditions in the Fram Strait, a narrow passage between eastern Greenland and Spitsbergen, during the past 30,000 years. They used a new research method. Based on fossilized algal remains in sediment cores, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association in collaboration with colleagues from the University Plymouth, Great Britain, worked out a uniform picture of the expansion of sea ice in this area that is particularly important for worldwide…

Research vessel Polarstern will start its journey October 16th from Bremerhaven to its 26th expedition into Antarctica. The expedition consists of four legs and leads Polarstern, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, at first to Punta Arenas.