The Alfred Wegener Institute carries out research in the Arctic and Antarctic as well as in the high and mid latitude oceans. The institute coordinates German polar research and makes available to national and international science important infrastructure, e.g. the research ice breaker “Polarstern” and research stations in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Newsflash
Press Releases
8. February 2012: Ocean warming causes elephant seals to dive deeper
Global warming is having an effect on the dive behaviour and search for food of southern elephant seals. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association cooperating in a joint study with biologists and oceanographers from the Universities of Pretoria and Cape Town have discovered that the seals dive deeper for food when in warmer water. The scientists attribute this behaviour to the migration of prey to greater depths and now wish to check this theory using a new sensor which registers the feeding of the animals below water.
Go to Press Release: Ocean warming causes elephant seals to dive deeper
26. January 2012: New study shows correlation between summer Arctic sea ice cover and winter weather in Central Europe
Even if the current weather situation may seem to speak against it, the probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer. Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have decrypted a mechanism in which a shrinking summertime sea ice cover changes the air pressure zones in the Arctic atmosphere and impacts our European winter weather.
12. January 2012: Meteorological observatory becomes climate observation station – 30 years of temperature measurements at Neumayer Antarctic research station
The meteorological observatory at the Antarctic Neumayer Station III is now officially considered to be a climate observation station by virtue of the fact that meteorologists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have been measuring the air temperature in Antarctica on a daily basis for 30 years. One of the results of the long-term research: the air at Neumayer Station has not become warmer over the past three decades.
To press release: Meteorological observatory becomes climate observation station
21. December 2011: The Copernicus of Geosciences: Alfred Wegener presented his revolutionary theory of continental drift 100 years ago
On 6 January 1912, the annual meeting of the Geological Association in Frankfurt, Germany witnessed the spectacle of one man against the world. On this date, the meteorologist Alfred Wegener, then 31, gave his talk on the formation of oceans and continents, and in the process shook the foundations of accepted doctrine. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research will celebrate its namesake on the hundredth anniversary of his theory. Together with the Senckenberg Museum, the AWI will host a commemorative colloquium at the historic scene of Wegener’s presentation in Frankfurt.
Go to press release: The Copernicus of Geoscience
