weather and sea-ice forecasts. The rationale: creating reliable weather and climate forecasting models means first gathering extensive data on the weather, sea ice, and the conditions at sea and on land [...] forecast” for the Arctic No-one can say for sure whether the next few days will be snowy or sunny at the North Pole: the weather forecast for the Arctic is far less reliable than for other parts of the world, [...] the Arctic than from the Mediterranean, so it hardly comes as a surprise that the weather at the North Pole also affects weather conditions in Germany. For example, researchers hypothesize that the warming

forcing their ice masses out to sea much faster than they did in the 1970s – a fact that also helps explain why this region alone accounts for ten percent of the global sea level rise. Taken together, the [...] in the Amundsen Sea? To answer that question, oceanographers at the AWI are combining climate models (see the graphic on p. 20/21) with extensive measurements gathered in the Weddell Sea, both below and [...] Dr Michael Schröder and Svenja Ryan monitored the currents in the eastern Weddell Sea – roughly 250 kilometres north of the Filchner Ice Shelf. There, at the outlet of the Filchner Trough, a deep undersea

Gloabal Change than other oceans. Sea ice strongly decraeses, temperatures rise at least twice as much, acidification and, the influence of warmer water from the North Atlantic is increasing ('Altantification') [...] relatively high proportion of biomass was being observed, the proportion of biomass in central Arctic, sea ice covered waters is relatively low. Team work P lankton E cology and B iogeochemistry in a C hanging

_________________________ Sylt (North Sea) The island Sylt in the North Sea (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institut) Sylt is the northernmost island of Germany located in the Wadden Sea of Schleswig-Holstein. Scientific [...] Offshore diving in the German Bight and North Sea Research Vessel Heincke (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institut) Dive missions in the German Bight and the North Sea are conducted from the research vessel RV [...] For sientific divers, the rocky island of Helgoland provides a unique biotope in the Southern North Sea (German Bight). Dive sites around Helgoland are typically characterized by hard bottom or sandy

following the Atlantic cod farther north.” OFOS photo of marine debris found at the bottom of the ocean in proximity of the AWI deep-sea observatory HAUSGARTEN in the Fram Stait (Sea passage between Greenland and [...] researchers have primarily focused on the visible litter floating on the sea surface or on beaches; how much litter there is in the deep seas remains largely unknown. Addressing that gap, AWI researcher Melanie [...] d to the Arctic from the more populated North Atlantic; or it could be from the ships that are now venturing farther and farther northwards as the Arctic’s sea-ice cover recedes. “Unlike in the past, we

Jens Quasten) Catching particles with plankton nets The North Sea is Gunnar Gerdts’ “hunting grounds” for marine plastic: not just on the open sea, but also in the mouths of the Elbe, Ems and Weser rivers [...] indicate that one cubic metre of water from the North Sea contains an average of between three and ten microparticles. He has also examined the arctic sea ice that fellow AWI researchers brought back from [...] particles. Today researchers know that this microplastic can be found in all regions, and even in arctic sea ice. AWI researcher Gunnar Gerdts is currently working to gauge the extent of this pollution. To do

of the litter to the North Pacific Gyre – which is why so much litter gathers there. The simulations also show that there may be a sixth, smaller garbage patch in the Barents Sea to the northeast of Norway [...] garbage patches in each. Located in the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, the largest is the North Pacific Gyre, which stretches from the Equator to roughly the 50 th parallel – where e.g. the Russian

seem like that much garbage, but compared to the North Sea, the effect of the concentration in the garbage patches becomes clear: although the North Sea is much closer to land (and therefore to the sources [...] ion Studio) Many of the pieces of plastic suspended in the water eventually drift out to the open sea. Sooner or later, most of them are caught by the great rotating ocean currents, also known as gyres

Boetius, AWI, Bremerhaven The FRAM Ocean Observing System will be installed in the gateway between the North Atlantic and the Central Arctic, representing a highly climate-sensitive and rapidly changing region [...] Lochte, AWI, Bremerhaven The ROBEX alliance aims to pool expertise gained in lunar expeditions and deep sea investigations to identify, develop, and test technologies that will allow the exploration of highly [...] inaccessible terrain, including areas on earth with extreme environmental conditions, such as the deep sea and Polar Regions, as well as other planets. The alliance will focus on developing a modular, robotic

with the new radar? Angelika Humbert: In the summer of 2016, we flew transects over Greenland’s 79° North Glacier and monitored the ice’s typical course for 200 kilometres – in other words, from the inland [...] the glacier to the grounding line. That’s what we call the point where the glacier flows into the sea and its tongue no longer touches the ground. We then took a look at the glacier’s inner structure and [...] below the ice stream. The roughness of this surface is a key factor in computer models of the 79° North Glacier’s flow, since our goal is to make predictions as to whether, and if so, how much, its flow