News

An international research team has discovered a 31-km wide meteorite impact crater buried beneath the ice-sheet in northern Greenland. This is the first time that a crater of any size has been found under one of Earth’s continental ice sheets. The research aircraft Polar 6 from the Alfred Wegener Instittue verified the discovery with radar measurements. The research is described in a new study just published in the internationally recognized journal Science Advance.

The Advisory Board of the Otto Schmidt Laboratory (OSL) meets in St. Petersburg, the, i.a. with Dr. Aleksander Makarov (Director AARI), Prof. dr. Antje Boetius (Director AWI) and the new OSL Director Vasiliy Povazhnyi.

„What is the next frontier – Space or Ocean?“ Zu dieser Frage ist AWI-Direktorin Antje Boetius zu einer Diskussion beim Ocean Frontier Institut angetreten.

Due to retarded work on the Polarstern the departure is delayed - On Sunday, 11 November 2018, the research icebreaker Polarstern will leave its homeport of Bremerhaven, bound for Cape Town, South Africa. This will mark the beginning of its Antarctic season, in which oceanographic fieldwork in the Weddell Sea, a resupply mission to the Neumayer Station III, and explorations of the Larsen C ice shelf region and the South Shetland Islands are on the agenda. The ship is expected to return to Bremerhaven in June 2019.

In the course of an extensive Antarctic expedition, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research recently investigated several lakes beneath Recovery Glacier that had been previously detected by satellite remote sensing. The experts found very few substantial bodies of water, which is a surprising result: up to that point, the scientific community had assumed that overflowing lakes below the East Antarctic Ice Sheet were the reason that ice masses began sliding and forming ice streams to begin with. This…

Warm, moist air masses from the lower latitudes are the main energy source for the Arctic atmosphere in winter; they have a significant influence on soil temperatures and can produce sea-ice melting. Because climate and weather models still have considerable difficulties when it comes to accurately depicting key processes involved in the transformation of these air masses, AWI researchers recently summarised the current state of knowledge and identified remaining gaps; their study has just been released in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The EU wants to ban single-use, disposable products such as drinking straws and ear swabs, the goal being to reduce the amount of plastic litter in our oceans. We discussed this initiative with two experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) – Dr Melanie Bergmann and Dr Lars Gutow.

UPDATE from 6 November 2018:
At this year’s annual meeting of the international Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), negotiations continued regarding a proposed Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Weddell Sea. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute were instrumental in preparing the application for protected status, which was submitted in 2016. Unfortunately, this year’s negotiations were unsuccessful.

On 25 and 26 October, the spotlight in Berlin will be on Arctic research. On the first day, the focus will be on the Arctic Science Forum, where experts from 20 nations, representatives of indigenous peoples, and NGOs will meet to discuss international collaboration in the context of Arctic research. On the second day, the 2nd Arctic Science Ministerial will convene, followed by public events that will round out the conference.

This morning, the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) research icebreaker Polarstern returned to her homeport in Bremerhaven. Over the previous six weeks, nearly 100 contributing researchers and crewmembers had engaged in geoscientific fieldwork, sea-ice experiments and meteorological research in the Central Arctic. In addition, students from the German-Canadian graduate training programme ArcTrain were on board.