News

The 27th research campaign of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research marks the beginning of the summer research season in the Antarctic. The institute collaborates with 20 research institutions and ten logistics organisations from 14 countries. Neumayer Station will serve as the logistical base for extensive measurements using aircraft. An expedition aboard research icebreaker Polarstern is travelling along the Antarctic Peninsula as part of the global ‘Census of Marine Life’, and at the Dallmann Laboratory activities will…

Atmospheric global warming has resulted in significant environmental changes on the Antarctic
Peninsula and throughout Western Antarctica. Glaciers are melting and the Larsen ice shelves are collapsing. An interesting consequence: areas which were previously covered by ice shelves several hundred meters thick are now accessible to researchers!

Even if climate records from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores show different patterns climate of Arctic and Antartica are connected directly. Recent investigations on an Antarctic ice core now published in nature indicate a general connection between both hemispheres by a ‘bipolar seesaw’.

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is acquiring a new research plane of type Basler BT-67. ‘Polar 5’ features improved aeronautical parameters and scientific instrumentation designed for long-lasting utilisation.

Several days ago, the ‘Maria S Merian’ returned from her second Arctic expedition with data confirming trends of Arctic warming.

Are marine organisms able to adapt to ocean acidification?

An international group of researchers under leadership of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research demands a stronger consideration of evolutionary adaptations in predictive models. For shell-forming marine algae the scientists compared laboratory experiments with fossil collections.

For the last 30,000 years, our planet has been hit by a constant rain of cosmic dust particles. Two scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) at Columbia University in New York and the Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, have reached this conclusion after investigating the amount of the helium isotope 3He in cosmic dust particles preserved in an Antarctic ice core over the last 30,000 years.

PLANKTON*NET is an online data base illustrating plankton organisms both visually and contextually. Originally, the data base was established at the Alfred Wegener Institute to provide a source of information for students participating in courses at the Biological Station Helgoland. Plankton is constituted by free-floating organisms in the water, from bacteria to jelly fish.

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la MER (Ifremer) will be extending their contractual collaboration for another five years. On this occasion, the official ceremony in Paris on June 28 will be attended by the French Minister of Research.

Today, the German Science Council has recommended going ahead with construction of the new research vessel Aurora Borealis. The research icebreaker, designed as a European cooperative project, will not only be equipped with state-of-the-art technology, but will also have a drilling platform. The ship is designed primarily for operation in the Arctic and will be the first of its kind capable of working in the Central Arctic Ocean during winter.