Polar Meteorology

The research group Polar Meteorology focuses on physical processes in the polar troposphere including its interactions with ocean and sea ice. This is done to understand processes on the spatial scale less than 50 km.

Key aspects are:

• Continuous observations in polar regions by running meteorological observatories (Neumayer in Antarctica, Polarstern)
• High precision aircraft measurements of turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer on air – sea ice interactions
• Numerical modelling and derivation of parameterizations for small scale processes to improve weather forecast and climate models
• Measurement of turbulent fluxes in the polar atmospheric boundary layer
• Remote sensing of small scale structures in sea/land ice and tundra and derivation of retrieval algorithms
• Measurement of methane concentration and –emission in Tundra

We make use of the polar aircraft Polar 5 and Polar 6, the Meteorological Observatories, the research vessel Polarstern, automatic weather stations (AWS), and the high performance computer, all from AWI.

Our research contributes to Topic 2 (Ocean and Cryosphere in Climate) of the Helmholtz Research Programme PoF IV.