record levels found in Arctic sea ice Find out more > BBC | 24.04.2018 Record concentration of microplastics found in Arctic Find out more > Dialogue & Lectures Policy advice Arctic Monitoring & Assessment [...] in the oceans is a current and growing problem, since every year several million metric tons of plastic find their way from the land to the water. Plastic particles are broken down in the ocean by sunlight [...] Climate change is especially putting the polar regions under pressure. Environmental changes in the Arctic result primarily from the decline in the area of sea ice and the decrease in its thickness, since

flux in polar oceans In both Polar Regions, areas covered by sea ice are shrinking due to climate warming. What are the consequences of sea ice decline in the Arctic and the Antarctic Ocean? Answering this [...] and nature conservation in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans under environmental change. The research project investigates ice-covered deep-sea ecosystems in the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice zones. Iceflux

these algae. This also means that the decline of the Arctic sea ice may have far-reaching consequences for the entire food web of the Arctic Ocean. Their results have been published online now in the journal [...] Food web
Algae that live in and under the sea ice play a much greater role for the Arctic food web than previously assumed. In a new study, biologists of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre

inside the ocean. They can grow as large as skyscrapers, travel thousands of kilometres and have a major impact on the transport of heat and nutrients. When they break, the surrounding ocean water is mixed [...] mixed. Oceanographer Dr Friederike Pollmann and her new Junior Researcher Group Artemics (Arctic internal wave energetics and mixing and their interdependence with sea ice in changing climate conditions) [...] conditions) at the Alfred Wegener Institute want to investigate how these waves work in the Arctic, how they are related to sea ice retreat and what this means for the future.

Arctic
The Arctic Ocean was once a gigantic freshwater lake. Only after the land bridge between Greenland and Scotland had submerged far enough did vast quantities of salt water pour in from the Atlantic

Press release

On 29 May 2025, the Polarstern research vessel set sail from Bremerhaven for the Arctic. The destination of the 95 expedition participants, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, is the AWI Hausgarten, a [...] y situated between Svalbard and Greenland. There they will investigate how the ecosystems of the Arctic deep sea are reacting to changing environmental conditions as a result of rapid climate change. The [...] June, will focus on benthic and plankton communities in the open water and physical changes in the ocean.

This much carbon in the Arctic Ocean comes from land Due to climate change and the associated rising temperatures more and more organic carbon is flowing into the central Arctic ocean. Scientists have now [...] largest Arctic expedition in history: on 12 October 2020 our research vessel Polarstern returned after a year-long drift. Find out more UN Ocean Conference 2025 Find out more UN Decade of Ocean Science [...] now quantified how much and how it affects the ability of the ocean to store CO2. Find out more Press release Taking to the highsea with a young research spirit On board the Polarstern research vessel, an

Press release

several decades of experience in ocean simulation and earned an international reputation for developing the global ocean/sea-ice model FESOM, which doesn’t divide the ocean’s surface into regular quadrilaterals [...] makes it possible to model specific ocean regions – those where deep water forms, or those with an abundance of eddies, like the Gulf Stream and the Southern Ocean – in impressive detail. At the same time [...] 340 KB Media Phys.org | 25.12.2019 Can Arctic 'ice management' combat climate change? Find out more > Euronews Green | 22.11.2019 Walking on thin ice in the Arctic? Find out more > Dialogue & Lectures Policy