News

Krill is rapidly gaining popularity. The small shrimp-like organism from the Antarctic is used as fish food in aquaculture and increasingly in dietary supplements and healing ointments. Although the krill catch is regulated, caution is required to avoid endangering the population itself and the species that depend on it, warns a group of krill experts headed by Prof. Dr. Bettina Meyer from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in the journal Communications Earth & Environment - Nature. 

Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner, AWI scientist and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been appointed member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). The Advisory Council acts as an independent scientific advisory body and analyses global environment and development problems, evaluates global sustainability policy and makes recommendations for action and research. See WBGU press release.

After more than a year in the Central Arctic, this Monday, 12 October, the research icebreaker Polarstern returned to her homeport in Bremerhaven. Accompanied by a ‘welcome committee’ of ships that came to greet, the ship entered the North Lock with the morning high tide, at ca. 9:00 am. At port, Expedition Leader Markus Rex, Captain Thomas Wunderlich and the entire team from the final leg of the expedition were welcomed by e.g. Federal Minister of Research Anja Karliczek and the Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Antje Boetius. The event marked…

The Alfred Wegener Institute comments on the latest reports in the media and social networks about alleged equality and diversity problems in connection with the MOSAiC expedition.

EU4Ocean: The new EU network on marine protection was launched with the workshop "Designing Ocean Literacy action in Europe" as a kick-off event. The EU4Ocean Platform, consisting of 76 organisations and initiatives, presented concrete ideas for global marine protection for the first time at the virtual event. AWI is also a member and was represented at the event by Gesche Krause.

The severe droughts in the USA and Australia are the first sign that the tropics, and their warm temperatures, are apparently expanding in the wake of climate change. But until now, scientists have been unable to conclusively explain the reasons for this, because they were mostly focusing on atmospheric processes. Now, experts at the AWI have solved the puzzle: the alarming expansion of the tropics is not caused by processes in the atmosphere, but quite simply by warming subtropical ocean. 

Many experts are concerned by the increasing pollution of the environment with tiny plastic particles. But we still don’t know enough about the scope of the problem: though there are various methods for detecting microplastic in water and in other samples, it’s often difficult to compare the results. An international team led by Dr Sebastian Primpke and Dr Michaela Meyns from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has now presented possible solutions in two new studies released in the journal “Applied…

We are delighted to announce that the communication team of the MOSAiC expedition yesterday received the BdKom Award 2020 in the category "Team of the Year". This prize is awarded annually by the German Federal Association of Communicators, in four categories. The "Team of the Year" award recognizes the joint and professional communication performance of a department and the concept of its communication project.

This summer the sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean shrank to the second-smallest extent since the beginning of satellite observation in 1979. By mid-September it covered only 3.8 million square kilometres, 0.5 million km² above the all-time low in 2012.  
According to data from the University of Bremen, back then the extent was only 3.27 million square kilometres. There are a number of causes for the massive loss of ice this summer: firstly, during the previous winter, primarily thin sea ice was formed in Russia’s marginal seas, and soon melted again…

Ice-sheet models are an essential tool in making predictions regarding the future of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. Nevertheless, these models still have a number of weaknesses. In an international model comparison, 14 research groups fed their ice-sheet models the same atmospheric and ocean data, and calculated what additional amounts of sea-level rise Greenland and the Antarctic would contribute by the year 2100. For Greenland, the results are consistent: if greenhouse-gas emissions levels remain just as high, the island will eventually lose…