the global average. The result – and, thanks to feedback effects, also the cause – is dwindling seaice. In a study published in the actual volume of Nature Communications, geo- and climate researchers [...] for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI) show that, in the course of our planet’s history, summertime seaice was to be found in the central Arctic in periods characterised by higher global temperatures – but
Arctic Ocean This September, the Arctic seaice extent has shrunk to 4.1 million square kilometres (sq km)-the second lowest in the history of satellite measurements. It is exceeded only by the all-time [...] all-time record low of 3.4 million sq km in 2012. "Once again, a massive loss of seaice in the Arctic," says Prof. Lars Kaleschke from Universität Hamburg's Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability
recently found higher amounts of microplastic in arctic seaice than ever before. However, the majority of particles were microscopically small. The ice samples from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean [...] contained up to 12,000 microplastic particles per litre of seaice. Further, the different types of plastic showed a unique footprint in the ice allowing the researchers to trace them back to possible sources
North Atlantic into the European marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean plays a significant role in the marked decrease in sea-ice growth, especially in winter. Sea-ice physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute [...] hindered ice growth in the Barents and Kara Seas for years. Furthermore, they demonstrate that the invasion of warm Atlantic water masses further east, at the northern edge of the Laptev Sea, can have [...] have such a long-term impact on the increase in ice thickness that the effects are evident a year later, when the ice has drifted towards Greenland via the North Pole and leaves the Arctic through Fram Strait
has warmed much faster than the rest of the world. With consequences for its seaice. In order to gauge the thickness of ice masses in the North Pole region, scientists chiefly rely on satellites. But this [...] developed a method that, for the first time, makes it possible to identify changes in the Arctic sea-ice thickness for the years 2011 to 2021 – even during the summer months. The resultant data is especially [...] this method proves problematic in the summer, when melting processes on the ice’s surface make it difficult to apply. An international team of researchers including experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute
a number of causes for the massive loss of ice this summer: firstly, during the previous winter, primarily thin seaice was formed in Russia’s marginal seas, and soon melted again when the spring came [...] Arctic Ocean This summer the sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean shrank to the second-smallest extent since the beginning of satellite observation in 1979. By mid-September it covered only 3.8 million [...] the Arctic has seen extremely high air and water temperatures. Accordingly, heat gnawed away at the ice from both above and below, resulting in widespread melting.
Arctic When the summer melting of the Arctic seaice ends in the middle of September, the minimum ice extent is likely to have decreased to an area of 4.4 (+/- 0.1) million square kilometres, according
Laptev Sea: The Birthplace of Arctic SeaIce Focus: SeaIce Latest sea-ice maps Iceflux - young investigators Section Polar Biological Ozeanography IMARES dossier: Antarctica Dr Hauke Flores Dr Ilka Peeken [...] of the SUIT net (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institut) Links to AWI sea-ice research SeaIce Physics Section Iceflux - young investigators Sea-ice portal [...] place in their Arctic home waters is the seaice. Millions of them seek shelter in the cracks and crevices under the ice floes, because the underside of the seaice is hardly smooth as polished glass. On
monsoon and Arctic seaice Within this project we will incorporate different data types with the focus of finding the physical mechanism related to the variability of the Arctic sea-ice variability and its [...] Europe and Asia. We present records of ice-rafted debris and sedimentation rates from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf to reconstruct the Holocene variations in Arctic seaice and Russian pan-Arctic river heat [...] thawing of land snow/ice and permafrost and more precipitation over the river basin (45–75°N) substantially multiplied river heat discharge in early summer, reducing Arctic seaice and thus amplifying the
Polar and Marine Research (AWI) report on the newly discovered interactions between the atmosphere, seaice and the ocean in a recent online study in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports. [...] Nature Scientific Reports The ice-covered Arctic Ocean is a more important factor concerning the concentration of the greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere than previously assumed. Experts from the