News

The ocean has a large effect on our planet’s climate. In this regard, mesoscale – i.e., medium-sized – eddies, which constitute essentially the weather on the ocean, could be far more important than previously believed. Accordingly, a new project, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has just been launched in order to more precisely assess this aspect: by doing so, “European Eddy Rich Earth System Models” (EERIE) could significantly improve today’s Earth system models and therefore projections of the climate’s future development.

If climate change continues at the current pace, it is very likely that a majority of marine species will lose considerable amounts of their currently suitable habitat ranges by the end of this century. This is the result of a modelling study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Global Change Biology. The interdisciplinary team of researchers included scientists of the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB), the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine…

There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen analyse the situation for the Sea Ice Portal. January 2023 had already set a new record for its monthly mean extent (3.22 million square kilometres), even though the melting phase in the Southern Hemisphere continues until the end of February.…

“Citizen Science” gives interested citizens the chance to actively engage in scientific research. A citizen-science project conducted by AWI in the Arctic now shows just how successful this can be. In the course of five years, citizens who went on sailing cruises to the Arctic surveyed and collected plastic debris that had washed up on the shores of Svalbard. This has now been analysed by the Alfred Wegener Institute. According to the findings, one third of the plastic debris which still bore imprints or labels allowing an analysis of their origin came…

A massive ecological change is underway in the Arctic. Due to rising water temperatures, many Arctic fish species are retreating farther and farther north, while species from more temperate latitudes are increasingly being sighted off the coasts of Greenland and Svalbard. Experts from Kiel University, the University of Tromsø, and the Alfred Wegener Institute have now analysed scientific publications on the ecological impacts of climate change in Arctic seas released in the past ten years. Their findings: the shifting habitats have affected entire biotic…

Since late summer last year, 50 sound clips from the Arctic and Antarctic seas have been made available for sound artists and musicians from all over the world to creatively reinterpret. On Monday, the resulting compositions will be published at citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds. As part of the Polar Sounds project, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) are collaborating with one of the world’s largest sound…

The second drilling campaign of Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice has been successfully completed. The international research project is funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros and coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the CNR. It aims to obtain data on the evolution of temperatures, the composition of the atmosphere and the carbon cycle, by going back in time 1.5 million years through analyzing an ice core extracted from the depths of the Antarctic ice sheet. The complex deep ice drilling system was installed quickly, kicking off…

From January 30 to February 2, the Arctic Frontiers Conference „Moving North“ will be held in Tromsø, Norway. With participants from the science, indigenous community, business and more, the most pressing issues facing the Arctic will be discussed. On February 2, AWI Director Antje Boetius will participate as a speaker in the session "Science - Moving the Real World," which will focus on the importance of knowledge-based decision making, in general and in the Arctic in particular. More information

Researchers from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Hamburg have come to Bremerhaven to process and analyze sea ice cores from the MOSAiC expedition at AWI. For this work, the freezer laboratory container of the MOSAiC expedition, which is normally only used at sea, has been set up in front of Building E. The researchers' goal is to better understand the growth history of sea ice and its optical properties. More information

AWI Director Antje Boetius will receive the Ernst Ludwig Winnacker Award from the Bayer Foundation on January 30. The award recognizes scientists who contribute to the dialogue between science and society. The award ceremony will be followed by a panel discussion on the topic of "Science and society - a broken relationship?". In addition to Boetius, the panel will include Jeanne Rubner from the TU Munich and Patrick Cramer from the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences.