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In April and May, 2016, a team of international scientists drilled into the site of the asteroid impact, known as the Chicxulub Impact Crater, which occurred 66 million years ago. The crater is buried several hundred meters below the surface in the Yucatán region of México. This joint expedition, organized by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) recovered a nearly complete set of rock cores from 506 to 1335 meters below the modern day seafloor.

More melt water is entering the Artic Ocean from the glaciers due to climbing temperatures. In addition, the rivers are carrying large amounts of sediment from thawing permafrost. How the Arctic Ocean will react to such changes is a very big question, which is concerning scientists around the world. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now published, together with international colleagues, the usage of a new optical method by which it is easier and quicker to identify different water masses.

The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) and the AWI are pleased to announce that the APECS International Directorate will be hosted by AWI at its research centre in Potsdam, Germany for five years from February 2017. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between both this week. The staff of the APECS International Directorate at AWI will include the APECS Executive Director, Dr. Gerlis Fugmann, and Heike Midleja as new half-time APECS Administrative Assistant (currently Administrative Assistant for the International Arctic…

On September 28, 2016, science ministers from 22 countries across the globe will gather in Washington, DC, for the first-ever White House Arctic Science Ministerial.

The mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet is bigger than previously estimated. This is the result of a study by international scientists to be published in Science Advances. The work shows that up to now the so-called glacial isostatic adjustment, i.e., the uplift of the bedrock, was not correctly taken into account when measuring the glaciers’ mass balance with data from GRACE satellite observations. The new calculations by the team yield 272 Giga tons (Gt) of mass loss per year from 2004 to 2015 compared to previously calculated 253 Gt per year. Ingo…

Tropical coral reefs lose up to two thirds of their zooplankton through ocean acidification. This is the conclusion reached by a German-Australian research team that examined two reefs with so-called carbon dioxide seeps off the coast of Papua New Guinea. At these locations volcanic carbon dioxide escapes from the seabed, lowering the water's acidity to a level, which scientists predict for the future of the oceans. The researchers believe that the decline in zooplankton is due to the loss of suitable hiding places. It results from the changes in the…

This September, the Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk to 4.1 million square kilometres (sq km)-the second lowest in the history of satellite measurements. It is exceeded only by the all-time record low of 3.4 million sq km in 2012. "Once again, a massive loss of sea ice in the Arctic," says Prof. Lars Kaleschke from Universität Hamburg's Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN). His colleague Prof. Christian Haas from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) confirms: "The trend continues." Currently, the Northeast and Northwest Passages are…

How to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable will be the focus of the Potsdam Summer School from September 5-14, bringing together more than 40 early-career scientists and young professionals from all around the globe.

25 years ago, the German Arctic Station in Svalbard was officially opened by the former directors of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Prof. Gotthilf Hempel and Dr Rainer Paulenz, as well as the BMBF State Secretary, Mr. Bernd Neumann.

With increasing water temperatures comes an increasing likelihood of potentially pathogenic bacteria appearing in the North and Baltic Seas. AWI scientists have now proven that a group of such bacteria known as vibrios can survive on microplastic particles. In the future, they want to investigate in greater detail the role of these particles on the accumulation and possible distribution of these bacteria.