News

Climate History

A sensational discovery: Traces of rainforests in West Antarctica

90 million-year-old forest soil provides unexpected evidence for exceptionally warm climate near the South Pole in the Cretaceous

[01. April 2020] 

An international team of researchers led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, have now provided a new and unprecedented perspective on the climate history of Antarctica. In a sediment core collected in the Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica, in February 2017, the team discovered pristinely preserved forest soil from the Cretaceous, including a wealth of plant pollen and spores and a dense network of roots.

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Marine Pollution

The seafloor of Fram Strait is a sink for microplastic from the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean

A new study shows: sea ice and ocean currents transport plastic particles into the deep sea from two directions

[25. March 2020] 

Working in the Arctic Fram Strait, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have found microplastic throughout the water column with particularly high concentrations at the ocean floor. 

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Observing Phytoplankton via Satellite

Water quality and toxic algal blooms

[18. March 2020] 

Thanks to a new algorithm, researchers at the AWI can now use satellite data to determine in which parts of the ocean certain types of phytoplankton are dominant

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MOSAiC expedition

MOSAiC aerial survey campaigns for the atmosphere and sea ice temporarily suspended

Polarstern crew continues to be unaffected by the corona pandemic

[16. March 2020] 

The MOSAiC project management decided to temporarily suspend the aerial survey campaigns planned for this spring and based in the Svalbard archipelago due to the highly dynamic development of the corona pandemic. There are currently three icebreakers underway in the Central Arctic for the MOSAiC expedition.

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MOSAiC

Two New Records at the North Pole

Despite adverse ice conditions, resupply icebreaker reaches the MOSAiC expedition

[02. March 2020] 

For days, fast sea ice had slowed the progress of the resupply icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn; bound for the North Pole, her mission was to support the second exchange of researchers and crew in the MOSAiC expedition. Nevertheless, she steadily drew closer to her destination, and finally, at 12:20 pm (CET) on Friday, 28 February, dropped anchor 970 metres from Polarstern, moored to the same floe. While the handover is in full swing on the MOSAiC floe, in Russia another icebreaker will soon leave port in order to supply Kapitan Dranitsyn with additional fuel on her return trip.

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