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Only a few weeks ago, massive precipitation produced by the storm “Boris” led to chaos and flooding in Central and Eastern Europe. An analysis conducted by the Alfred Wegener Institute shows that in a world without the current level of global warming Boris would have deposited roughly nine percent less rain. Such conclusions can be drawn thanks to a new modelling approach called ‘storylines’. How it can be used in near-real-time was just presented in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment. At the same time, the AWI team released a freely…

AWI scientist Hans-Otto Pörtner has been reappointed by Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger as a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). The appointment is valid from November 1, 2024 to October 31, 2028. In addition to the AWI climate researcher, there are eight other members of the WBGU.

Oldenburg. A German-American research team led by Professor Iliana Baums from the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB) and Dr Samuel Vohsen from Lehigh University in the US has discovered two highly unusual bacterial species in the tissue of two deep-sea corals from the Gulf of Mexico. These previously unknown coral symbionts have an extremely reduced genome and lack the ability to obtain energy from carbohydrates, the team reports in an article published in the scientific journal Nature…

The Amazon region is a global hotspot of biodiversity and plays a key role in the climate system because of its ability to store large amounts of carbon and its influence on the global water cycle. The rain forest is threatened, however, by climate change as well as by intensified deforestation activities. An international team of researchers that includes scientists from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, the Geosciences Department, the Institute for Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen and the Alfred Wegener Institute, have…

AWI Director Antje Boetius provided exciting insights into marine research at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg: in her performative lecture as part of the project “The Ocean is a Noisy Place” by the Hanoverian orchestra “musica assoluta”, she drew attention to the threat to the marine habitat. The program, under the direction of Thorsten Encke, combined classical and contemporary music, science and video art. Video artist cylixe and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff also took part.

Flatfish and shrimp are caught in the North Sea by using trawls that are dragged across the seabed. This releases carbon into the water and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, as shown by the latest research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon. The study is part of the collaborative project APOC. Partners are the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND). The researcher's effort for…

This year, the Polar Dialogue took place alongside the Arctic Circle Assembly. Under the leadership of Katrín Jakobsdóttir, former Prime Minister of Iceland, and Antje Boetius, AWI Director and co-chair of the conference, the Polar Dialogue provides an open platform for exchange between scientists and policy makers. The focus will be on science diplomacy and preparations for the 5th International Polar Year 2032-33.

A combination of multiple stressors reduces the acclimation potential of Atlantic herring larvae. A recent study shows that an increased temperatures and bacterial exposure together impair the larval stress response. The outcomes of the study highlight the high sensitivity of herring early life stages towards multiple climate change-related stressors. The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment by scientists from the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB), the Alfred…

In spring 2025, the Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Prof Antje Boetius, will be appointed president of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California. MBARI is one of the most esteemed institutes for marine research and technologies. Based on the US Pacific Coast, it specializes in exploring the deep sea and its unknown diversity of life. “This position will give me a unique opportunity to contribute to the development of innovative deep-sea technologies with a focus on imaging, robotics, sensor systems and AI,” says the…

National and international water policy must adapt to ongoing, accelerated changes in the global water cycle and respond to them quickly and comprehensively. This is the key message of the WBGU report 'Water in a heated world', which the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) today presented to Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Mario Brandenburg.