Exploring Ice and Oceans

Open Day at AWI-Helgoland: The Biological Institute Helgoland opened its doors to the public. The public and tourists took up the offer with great interest and informed themselves about the current research at the AWI Helgoland site. Hands-on science enthused young and old alike. Whether it was getting to know the animals and plants in Helgoland's waters, marveling at the beautiful black and white photos by Franz Schensky or learning more about the reintroduction of the European oyster.

Increasingly, marine organisms from all over the world are being carried into German coastal waters by humans, whose diversity and ecology they can fundamentally change. For example, the German North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts are now characterized by non-indigenous marine organisms. Their occurrence and rate of introduction is used as an international assessment criterion for the ecological status of marine areas. In cooperation with the Schleswig-Holstein State Office for the Environment, the AWI North Sea Office has compiled an overview of all known…

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Many of the models used to make climate projections are unable to dynamically reflect permafrost. A new study involving experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute has for the first time applied an extensive ensemble of 17 climate models to quantify how said models portray permafrost in warm climates. Drawing on a comparison of models for a warm period during the mid-Pliocene roughly three million years ago, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the researchers conclude that the near-surface permafrost extent was less than 10…

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