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Swarms of krill in the Southern Ocean form the second tier of the Antarctic food pyramid, following plant plankton. If stocks were to shrink due to over-intensive fishing, this would incur direct consequences for many animal species that feed almost exclusively on krill. From 20 to 31 October, the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) will take place in Hobart, Australia, where the future regulation of krill fishery will represent a central topic. Prior to this, an international…

Climate researcher Prof. Dr. Markus Rex is one of three distinguished recipients of this year’s NOMIS Award for groundbreaking interdisciplinary research. The NOMIS Award is one of the most prestigious and generously funded international scientific awards. The scientist from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) received particular recognition for leading the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition between the autumns of 2019 and 2020. For a year, the research…

Climate models suggest that climate change could reduce the Southern Ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2). However, observational data actually shows that this ability has seen no significant decline in recent decades. In a recent study, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have discovered what may be causing this. Low-salinity water in the upper ocean has typically helped to trap carbon in the deep ocean, which in turn has slowed its release into the atmosphere – until now, that is, because climate change is increasingly altering the…

Driftwood plays a key role in Arctic coastal ecosystems: it stores carbon, stabilises coastlines and provides a habitat for animals. At the same time, it can offer clues regarding climate change in the Arctic region, providing information on the likes of storm surges, coastal erosion and shifting fluvial dynamics. Despite the crucial role it plays, there is still a lot that we do not know about the large-scale distribution patterns of driftwood. Now, for the first time, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have systematically mapped driftwood…

Arctic permafrost stores massive amounts of organic carbon in its frozen soils and deeper deposits. However, as the Arctic warms particularly rapidly, these deposits are thawing out. As a result, more and more greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere. There has been little research on where and how quickly permafrost thaws, as well as on the processes that cause the rapid thaw. PeTCaT (Rapid Permafrost Thaw Carbon Trajectories) is an international project that, above all, aims to increase our knowledge of these rapid thaw processes. Under…

The centrepiece of the new construction project for the Polarstern's successor is now taking shape: by the end of August, TKMS, Wärtsilä, Steerprop and Aker Arctic had inked the contracts for the entire propulsion unit: rudder propellers, engines and exhaust gas aftertreatment system. Many of the components are genuine market innovations with which the Alfred Wegener Institute and TKMS are setting new standards in research navigation.

The Polarstern recently ended a two-month expedition in the Central Arctic in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The international and interdisciplinary research team, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, focused on the summer melting of Arctic sea ice in three different regimes. The comprehensive inventory revealed major differences between the various sea ice regimes and a low sea ice concentration in the study area. In addition, bacteria and zooplankton dominated the biological communities, while the expected ice algae could hardly be found. 

Just exactly how internal clocks function in zooplankton in the open sea at the mechanistic and molecular level is the core question the BICLOPS junior research group is addressing. Over the next five years, the European Research Council (ERC) will be funding the group led by AWI biologist Sören Häfker to the tune of €1.5 million. 

Some Fourteen thousand years ago, algal blooms in the Southern Ocean helped to massively reduce the global carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere – as has now been revealed by new analyses of ancient DNA published by a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute in the journal Nature Geoscience. In the ocean around the Antarctic continent, these algal blooms had a significant impact on global carbon dynamics. The current and expected future decline in sea ice in this region now poses a serious threat to these algae, which could incur global consequences.

Since the mid-1990s, the Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass, leaving only three floating tongues remaining. One of these, Nioghalvfjerdsbræ or the 79°N Glacier, is already showing the first signs of instability. In addition to the warm ocean water, which is increasingly thinning the ice from below, the runoff of meltwater on the surface is also playing an increasingly significant role. In a new study, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute investigated how - caused by global warming -  a 21 km2 large meltwater lake formed and developed on…