Projects

assessment of the flowering of these species and the associated risk of mussel poisoning in Chinese and German coastal waters. The focus is on the current status of the biodiversity of the genus Azadinium [...] Objective The One Blue project analyses concentrations, degradation and impacts of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the oceans through case studies in the Atlantic, the Arctic and the Mediterranean [...] Research objective The goal of CONMAR is to provide information on the distribution and condition of munitions in the German North Sea and Baltic Sea and to generate an understanding of the release and dispersal

Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems

in the rest of the world in a climate model simulation (Photo: Alfred-Wegener-Institut) Correlation of centennial temperature variations in Brussels with temperature variations in the rest of the world [...] This project will advance the state of the art in coupled climate – ice-sheet modeling, and lead to deeper understanding of the long-term impacts of climate change on the Earth system. Contact: Alexander [...] and health in the high latitudes, as well as proxy development and proxy data synthesis, along with the analysis of global interactions, are central research interests of the group. The goal is to achieve

Sea Ice

place in the Arctic and Antarctic. Depending on the season, the ice covers greater or lesser parts of the ocean. In the Northern Hemisphere, the ocean gradually freezes over in the course of the long Polar [...] near the end of winter. At this point, the Arctic Ocean is completely covered in ice from between the coasts of Canada, Alaska and Siberia to the eastern coast of Greenland. When the sun returns, the ice [...] the formation and melting of sea ice affect the atmosphere and the ocean, and with them, the climate, in a variety of ways. The ice reflects the majority of incoming sunlight back into space. In contrast

Permafrost

effects on the landscape, as the large ice masses melt, causing parts of the surface to collapse. The considerable diversity to be found in permafrost makes it particularly difficult to keep track of the various [...] found at the Zugspitze. Given its smaller overall land mass, there is less permafrost in the Southern Hemisphere. Although the Antarctic offers the constant low temperatures needed, the amount of land where [...] where the majority of biological and biochemical activity takes place, it is also referred to as the “active layer”, which, as the thawing layer, is not considered to be part of the permafrost. The layer

Completed Projects

under the ERA-Net.RUS funding scheme, with partners from the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IOPAN) and the Institute of Numerical Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences [...] partner universities. The scientific team with the PhD students in its centre aims to advance the understanding of the variability of the Arctic Ocean and the cryosphere on time scales of decades to millennia [...] 2017 funded by the Helmholtz Association over a period of three years. The project comprises eight Helmholtz Research Centres and aims to improve the representation of the components of the Earth system

Knowledge Transfer

(YOPP) - from research to improved environmental safety. This video explains the background, methods and aims of the Year of Polar Prediction. For more information, please also visit www.polarprediction [...] change projections to support policy and decision-making. Developing the first operational climate projection system as part of the Destination Earth Initiative, which will deliver real-time, high-resolution [...] storylines to make the impacts of climate change more tangible and relevant for different sectors and communities. Understanding Climate Models and Climate Change We address key questions such as: What is

Projects

improve the ability of such ESMs to faithfully represent the centennial-scale evolution of the global climate, especially its variability, extremes and how tipping points may unfold under the influence [...] climate change information is delivered, helping address the complex challenges of a warming world. As part of the EU’s Destination Earth initiative, the Climate DT produces multi-decadal, high-resolution climate [...] new generation of Earth System Models (ESMs) that are capable of explicitly representing a crucially important, yet unexplored regime of the Earth system – the ocean mesoscale. Leveraging the latest advances

Southern Ocean - Overturning Circulation

run down the continental slope towards the deep sea floor. The newly formed and well ventilated bottom water underrides, steered by bottom topography, the ACC to fill the deep basins of the world ocean. [...] downward to the deep ocean layers or to the sediment. This process is called the biological pump. Whether the Southern Ocean at large acts as a source or a sink of CO2 for the atmosphere depends on the balance [...] in the Southern Ocean is brought about by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) which, driven by strong westerly winds and the temperature differences between the subtropics and the icy Antarctic continent

Triaxus

and starboard of the ship. Depeding on the diving depth of the system and the speed of the ship, the winch can pay out up to 2500 m of cable with 60 m/min spooling speed. The winch is of the type "Mermac [...] stitut) The profile measurement distance or horizontal resolution of the topAWI system mainly depends on the measurement speed of the sensors and the shape of the undulation profile. Since the measuring [...] use of standard sensors and is only limited by the system properties of the "Triaxus" sensor carrier itself. The sensors can be mounted in free areas inside of the sensor carrier, as well as onto the extra

Research Focus

tal conditions of the future. This implies that we research the state of the Earth System over a time span of several tens of millions of years. While we employ a diverse approach, the following time scales [...] considering the properties of the climate of the past. We are able to reconstruct past climate changes from historical data collections or by evaluating documented observations. The history of Earth provides [...] climate change? This is one of research's central questions. To give a proper answer, we have to know the parameters of natural variability, e.g. the temperatures in oceans, above the continents and in polar