News

Working in the Arctic Fram Strait, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have found microplastic throughout the water column with particularly high concentrations at the ocean floor. Using model-based simulations, they have also found an explanation for this high level of pollution. According to their findings, the two main ocean currents in Fram Strait transport the microscopically small plastic particles into the region between Greenland and Spitsbergen from both the Arctic and the North…

Thanks to a new algorithm, researchers at the AWI can now use satellite data to determine in which parts of the ocean certain types of phytoplankton are dominant. In addition, they can identify toxic algal blooms and assess the effects of global warming on marine plankton, allowing them to draw conclusions regarding water quality and the ramifications for the fishing industry.  

On Thursday 12 March, the Norwegian government announced comprehensive measures to combat the spread of the corona virus, effective immediately. As a result, all travellers to Norway from non-Nordic countries who do not have a residence permit will most likely have to immediately leave the country again or be placed in quarantine for 14 days. In response, and due to the highly dynamic development of the corona pandemic, on Friday 13 March the MOSAiC project management decided to temporarily suspend the aerial survey campaigns planned for this spring and…

As part of a preparatory course with future expedition participants at AWI Bremerhaven, an appropriate test was carried out on Thursday, March 5. Twenty expedition participants and six supervisors from Germany, Norway and the Netherlands took part in this course. A participant from Munich was tested positive. The participant was symptom-free. The city of Bremerhaven has published a press release.

Attractive pictures, a clear menu and easily accessible information - this is how the new website of the Helmholtz Climate Initiative presents itself.

Polar bears in the MOSAiC research camp: The jury of World Press Photo, the largest photo competition for press photography, found this photo “worthy of an award” and so AWI photographer Esther Horvath and her two polar bears were nominated in the “Environment” category. On April 16, the photographer learns whether her photo has won and will be touring 80 cities worldwide for one year as part of a travelling exhibition.

For days, fast sea ice had slowed the progress of the resupply icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn; bound for the North Pole, her mission was to support the second exchange of researchers and crew in the MOSAiC expedition. Nevertheless, she steadily drew closer to her destination, and finally, at 12:20 pm (CET) on Friday, 28 February, dropped anchor 970 metres from Polarstern, moored to the same floe. While the handover is in full swing on the MOSAiC floe, in Russia another icebreaker will soon leave port in order to supply Kapitan Dranitsyn with additional…

The documentary film meeting "Top of the docs" gave a look at the highlights of ARD documentary on the edge of the Berlinale. One of the films presented will document the MOSAiC expedition. For this, film teams accompany the entire expedition for one year. The result will be broadcast on prime time in November 2020. Pinar Atalay spoke to expedition leader Markus Rex and filmmaker Philip Grieß about the course of the expedition and the shooting under the extreme conditions of the arctic winter.

Prof Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II and Head of the Integrative Ecophysiology Section at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, has been selected as a new member of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc). 

In the course of the past 40 years, the major wind-driven current systems in the ocean have steadily shifted toward the poles. Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), came to this conclusion after analysing long-term global satellite data on the ocean surface temperature and sea level height. Both datasets offer insights into the evolution of large-scale surface currents, and indicate that, in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere alike, the borders of the ocean gyres and their boundary currents are…