News

The journey of 'MS Wissenschaft', which starts today in Berlin, will last four and a half months. Until October 9, the exhibition ship will be travelling through 34 cities in Germany. On the route, the ship stops at the AWI sites Bremerhaven and Potsdam.

On 11 May 2018, a high-level symposium was held in Kiel in memory of Eugen Seibold, at which AWI Director Prof. Antje Boetius gave a keynote speech. Marine geologist Seibold has trained and shaped generations of marine researchers, and would have turned 100 this year. Following the symposium, a new research vessel was christened ‘Eugen Seibold’.

When ocean temperatures change, the natural variability of the oxygen supply and the associated biogeochemical cycles don’t respond in a lineal manner. Instead, circa 6,000 years ago a tipping point was reached relatively suddenly. This was the key finding of a study by group of researchers led by geologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which has now been published in the journal PNAS.

Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the Universities of Oldenburg and Potsdam, Germany have confirmed the existence of a new cryptic amphipod species in the North Sea. For the first time for the description of a new species, they used a level of mitogenomic information, which was normally applied in other areas of genetics. The discovery of Epimeria frankei was now published in the journal Scientific Reports. In the future, this level of molecular information could revolutionise biodiversity research.

They form the basis of the Arctic food web – and are extremely tough: even when the water becomes more acidic and the available light or temperatures change, various phytoplankton assemblages in the Arctic demonstrate undiminished productivity and biodiversity. This was the main finding presented in a study by researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, which they jointly release with their Canadian colleagues advanced online in the journal Nature Climate Change. Yet the question of whether this source of food for seals, whales and commercially…

The delegations were informed in detail about international cooperation at the site with a focus on climate and environmental research. Accompanied by Kim Holmen, International Director at the Norwegian Polar Research Institute NPI, the visit to Svalbard gave them a chance to see the effects of climate change up close.

A joint UK-US research programme launched today is one of the most detailed and extensive examinations of a massive Antarctic glacier ever undertaken. The Alfred Wegener Institute directly participated in an expedition during which researchers explored the structure of the ice and of the ground below it.

Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have recently found higher amounts of microplastic in arctic sea ice than ever before. However, the majority of particles were microscopically small. The ice samples from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean contained up to 12,000 microplastic particles per litre of sea ice. Further, the different types of plastic showed a unique footprint in the ice allowing the researchers to trace them back to possible sources. This involves the massive garbage patch in…

AWI Director Antje Boetius welcomes a delegation of the University Laval, Canada, and the french research organisation CNRS. Scientists of both institutions present current and foreseen projects and discuss on future cooperation.

The AWI-director, deep-sea scientist and leader of one of MPI’s research groups, Prof Dr Antje Boetius, receives the prestigious Vernadsky Medal for her groundbreaking contributions to biogeosciences and spearheading research on methane-based metabolisms and the marine carbon cycle.