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![[Translate to English:] Südlicher Seeelefant (Mirounga leonina)](/fileadmin/_processed_/9/f/csm_2010_BulleMitSender_JPloetz_1796244d20.jpg "Southern elephant seal")
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Short notices
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Annette Barthelt Prize for Ayla Murray
23. March 2026Dr Ayla Murray was awarded the Science Prize of the Annette Barthelt Foundation at GEOMAR on Friday for her doctoral thesis completed at the Alfred Wegener Institute. Further information can be found here.
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Visit of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
19. March 2026Exchange at the AWI: The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) visited the AWI’s main campus in Bremerhaven. AWI Interim Director Maarten Boersma welcomed the delegation. This was followed by presentations from the AWI faculty and a tour of the institute. The ITLOS is an independent organisation within the UN system, operating on the basis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982.
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Scientific exchange at NCPOR
16. March 2026During a delegation visit to Goa, India, Maarten Boersma, Nicole Biebow, Frank Lamy, Lester Lembke Jene, Hanno Meyer and Wolfram Geissler visited the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) at the invitation of Director Thamban Melot. At the meeting on 12 and 13 March, the participants discussed the further cooperation between the AWI and NCPOR, particularly in the fields of palaeoceanography and within the Antarctica InSync project. The discussions were based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed two years ago.
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New measurement campaign investigates clouds over Arctic sea ice
13. March 2026The international research campaign COMPEX (Clouds over complex environment) is kicking off with Polar 5 measurement flights over the Arctic and will investigate the properties of clouds over sea ice that cannot be detected by satellites. Since clouds play a central role in the climate of the polar region, the results will help scientists understand why this region is warming particularly rapidly compared to the rest of the world. The University of Cologne is leading the research campaign. To the original press release.
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![[Translate to English:] Wetterballon](/fileadmin/_processed_/a/f/csm_20120905_Neumayer__SC87926_SChristmann_95cfd8ec36.jpg "[Translate to English:] Wetterballon")
Antarctic Research Trends Report 2025
02. March 2026German research on Antarctic topics is at the forefront internationally. This is shown by the recently published “Antarctic Research Trends Report 2025,” which evaluated around 30,000 academic publications on Antarctica and the Southern Ocean from 2016 to 2024. For example, Germany ranks third behind the US and the UK in terms of publications produced in international cooperation, and fifth in terms of total number of publications. The publications of AWI researchers contribute significantly to this. They consistently rank in the top 10 in the international ranking of institutions. The report is published by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the University of the Arctic (UArctic) and can be found here: https://scar.org/scar-news/antarctic-research-trends-report
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Ice loss due to warm seawater
02. March 2026A study led by the British Antarctic Survey, in which AWI geoscientist Johann Klages also participated as co-author, has concluded that the retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet since the end of the last Ice Age around 18,000 years ago has been largely driven by warm seawater, not air. Analysis of sediment cores from the Amundsen Sea continental shelf shows that the ice retreated significantly whenever warm deep water reached the ice shelves. This process is accelerating the melting of the ice sheet once again today. In the area of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers, the ice is retreating into ever deeper areas, which is accelerating the loss of ice mass and making a partial loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet increasingly likely. To the study