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Emperor penguins are an endangered species. Scientists are protecting the largest of all penguins by monitoring their numbers precisely and investigating which factors affect their population. A research team led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has now developed a new, reliable method at the Alfred Wegener Institute's Neumayer Station III, among others, that can accurately predict the number of breeding pairs and chicks and thus represents an early warning system for the progression of climate change in the Southern Ocean. The…

To protect the unique Antarctic flora and fauna, Germany is committed to a coherent and representative network of protected areas in the Antarctic. Thanks to a German-American initiative – initiated and developed by the German Environment Agency (UBA) and financed by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) – it has now been possible to expand this network. Seven islands at the north-eastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, the so-called “Danger Islands”, were declared a protected area…

A guest on board of Polarstern: Bruno Hönel from the Green Party visited the ship yesterday. The member of the German Bundestag was welcomed by AWI Administrative Director Karsten Wurr. The visit was used for a mutual exchange.

The basis of the marine food web in the Arctic, the phytoplankton, responds to heatwaves much differently than to constantly elevated temperatures. This has been found by the first targeted experiments on the topic, which were recently conducted at the Alfred Wegener Institute’s AWIPEV Station. The phytoplankton’s behaviour primarily depends on the cooling phases after or between heatwaves, as shown in a study just released in the journal Science Advances. 

Over the past three years the collaborative research project APOC, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, has investigated how climate change and anthropogenic activities and pressure impact the carbon cycle in the North Sea. The final event took place in Berlin, which included an expert discussion with representatives from politics, society and science under the motto “Mud matters”.

Climate change is putting countless marine organisms under pressure. However, jellyfish in the world’s oceans could actually benefit from the rising water temperatures – also and especially in the Arctic Ocean, as researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now successfully shown. In computer models, they exposed eight widespread Arctic jellyfish species to rising temperatures, sea ice retreat and other changing environmental conditions. The result: by the second half of this century, all but one of the species in question could substantially…

After more than six months, the research icebreaker Polarstern is returning to its home port of Bremerhaven after a successful Antarctic season. The expeditions to the southern hemisphere and the transit there focussed on the oceanography and geology of East Antarctica as well as student training. Because of this special study area for the Polarstern, there was a change of personnel in Hobart, which was the first port call in Australia in her more than 40-year history.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology with the participation of the Alfred Wegener Institute have discovered a new partnership between a marine diatom and a bacterium that can account for a large share of nitrogen fixation in vast regions of the ocean. The newly-discovered bacterial symbiont is closely related to the nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia which live in partnership with many crop plants and may open up new avenues to engineer nitrogen-fixing plants. This discovery, now described in the scientific journal Nature, could open up…

Over the past two days, Berlin hosted the Arctic Circle Forum. More than 100 speakers, including Arctic researchers, policy makers and indigenous representatives, took part in over 20 sessions. In addition to AWI Director Antje Boetius, participants included Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, Icelandic Research Minister Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir and H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco. 

Scientific research - not only confined to dedicated research vessels but also from non-scientific vessels and marine infrastructures. This is one of the ideas promoted by the Helmholtz Innovation Platform “Shaping an Ocean Of Possibilities” (SOOP). SOOP aims to develop new technologies and structures for ocean observation and has recently initiated a cooperation with HX Hurtigruten Expeditions. During cruise voyages to remote regions, ocean data will be collected for scientific purposes. The first expedition with SOOP technology on board now started in…