News

Over the past several decades, the Arctic has warmed much faster than the rest of the world. With consequences for its sea ice. In order to gauge the thickness of ice masses in the North Pole region, scientists chiefly rely on satellites. But this method proves problematic in the summer, when melting processes on the ice’s surface make it difficult to apply. An international team of researchers including experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute has now developed a method that, for the first time, makes it possible to identify changes in the Arctic…

ICYMARE, a conference organised by and for young marine scientists, will take place in Bremerhaven from 13-16 September. Organized entirely by volunteers, the international meeting offers the opportunity to exchange ideas with other young researchers and to build up a network at an early stage. ICYMARE is an event of the Bremen Society for Natural Sciences and will take place at the University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven and the AWI – with many contributions from AWI young researchers.

Digitalising engineering: ELISE GmbH's mission is to harness the combined expertise of engineers and automate certain aspects of product development; in particular, it hopes to reduce the time needed for drafting, designing and constructing technical components. Investors have now provided ca. 14.5 million euros of financial backing for the Bremen-based start-up.

Many marine organisms such as brown algae, fish or bristle worms have an internal monthly calendar: They adapt their behavior and reproduction to the different light conditions to which they are exposed. A team led by the two researchers Kristin Tessmar-Raible (Alfred Wegener Institute and Max Perutz Labs Vienna) and Eva Wolf (Johannes Gutenberg University and Institute of Molecular Biology, Mainz) has now discovered how marine organisms can distinguish between different light conditions and adjust their internal calendar accordingly.

AWI Director Antje Boetius will give a talk on "Eyewitnesses Anthropocene: Expeditions to the End of the World" at the 132nd Assembly and 200th Anniversary of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (GDNÄ) on September 8, beginning at 4:30 pm. The lecture will be streamed live. In addition, AWI will present the photo exhibition on the MOSAiC expedition: "Polarnight" by Esther Horvath at the assembly.

On 6 September, the Kavli Award Ceremony will took place in Oslo, with AWI Director Antje Boetius and AWI Vice Director Uwe Nixdorf also attending. The Kavli Prize honours scientists for achievements in astrophysics, nanosciences and neurosciences and is presented to the winners by Norway's King Harald V. In addition to the award ceremony, the entire week represents a biennial celebration of science and provides opportunities for dialogue on significant research.

Good news from the emperor penguin colony near the German Neumayer Station III in Antarctica's Atka Bay: The food mash fed by the adults is free of microplastics larger than 500 micrometres. This is the result of an analysis of the stomachs of 41 young emperor penguins, which researchers have now published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Before they reach the age of one, young emperor penguins from Atka Bay, near the German Neumayer Station III in the Antarctic, swim far north, beyond the 50th parallel south. Consequently, the current and planned Marine Protected Areas fail to offer them sufficient protection, as researchers including experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute contend in a study just released in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

In the past several years, East Siberia has repeatedly been hit by extreme wildfires. In order to understand which conditions promote the occurrence of wildfires in the region, a team of researchers led by Ramesh Glückler and Elisabeth Dietze from the Alfred Wegener Institute has now investigated the connections between wildfire activity and forest structures in East Siberia for a period beginning roughly 10,000 years ago. To do so, they used lake sediments to reconstruct environmental changes during the timeframe in question. The experts assume there…

On 30 August, 14 young investigators from around the globe will depart from Bremerhaven, bound for Cape Town. During the cruise, known as the North South Atlantic Training Transect, they’ll gain valuable insights into the marine sciences and conduct brief projects on the interactions between the ocean, atmosphere and climate. They’ll take with them three mini-boats constructed by schoolchildren from Germany, Ireland and Spain, containing instruments to measure the air and water temperature.