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Atmospheric researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have now developed a climate model that can accurately depict the frequently observed winding course of the jet stream, a major air current over the Northern Hemisphere. The breakthrough came when the scientists combined their global climate model with a new machine learning algorithm on ozone chemistry. Using their new combo-model, they can now show that the jet stream’s wavelike course in winter and subsequent extreme weather conditions cold…

AWI scientist Michael Fritz receives this year's Potsdam Prize for Science Communication for the project "Es taut!: Frozen Ground Cartoons". The comics were created in cooperation with artists.

As a deep-sea researcher and Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Antje Boetius has explored oceans around the globe. This year, for the first time she is also supporting the environmental photo festival »horizonte zingst«. In her role as festival patron, she hopes the gripping images will help raise awareness for environmental concerns

Prize for AWI scientist Ingmar Nitze: As part of this years Publication Award of the Leibniz Kolleg in Potsdam, the permafrost expert has been announced as a laureate. The yearly confered promotion supports young scientists of mathematics and natural sciences.

With the return of the Russian research icebreaker “Akademik Treshnikov” to the port of Murmansk, Russia, another successful chapter in Russian-German collaborative Arctic research drew to a close. On 20 March 2019 the ship embarked on the Russian expedition TRANSARCTIC 2019 in the Barents Sea and returned on 20 May 2019, with seven researchers from German partner institutions (AWI, GEOMAR, University of Bremen and University of Kiel) on board.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the planet’s most powerful and arguably most important. It is the only one to flow clear around the globe without getting diverted by any landmass, sending up to 150 times the flow of all the world’s rivers clockwise around the frozen continent. It connects all the other oceans, and is thought to play a key role in regulating natural climate swings that have repeatedly swept the earth for millions of years. But much is still not known about how it works, including how it might now respond to human-induced climate…

Two current satellite missions from the European Space Agency (ESA) provide data to measure Arctic sea-ice thickness. The thickness of sea ice is a key parameter for many scientific and operational applications: But in contrast to the sea-ice coverage, measuring the thickness with satellites has always been challenging. 

“Microbiology of global change” is the name of the research area that explores microbial responses to global warming, natural resource depletion, and environmental pollution, as well as feedback mechanisms and functions in climate change. The internationally respected journal “Nature Reviews Microbiology” asked Prof Antje Boetius for her thoughts on the area:“Given the fact that microorganisms have significant effects on our planet’s material flows, productivity and health, not to mention on us human beings, this field of research will provide essential…

Today the members of the PETA-CARB team at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam have every reason to celebrate, as they were recently honoured with a brand-new award: the Ralf Dahrendorf Prize for the European Research Area, which recognises outstanding engagement in key EU research projects, as well as the motivation to share the project outcomes with the public. The prize, which is awarded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, went to a total of six recipients, each of which will…

The fate of permafrost - soil that is frozen for 2 or more years - is of huge importance for the global climate because of the large amounts of organic carbon stored in it, which can be released into the atmosphere as these soils start to thaw.