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With the return of the Russian research icebreaker “Akademik Treshnikov” to the port of Murmansk, Russia, another successful chapter in Russian-German collaborative Arctic research drew to a close. On 20 March 2019 the ship embarked on the Russian expedition TRANSARCTIC 2019 in the Barents Sea and returned on 20 May 2019, with seven researchers from German partner institutions (AWI, GEOMAR, University of Bremen and University of Kiel) on board.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the planet’s most powerful and arguably most important. It is the only one to flow clear around the globe without getting diverted by any landmass, sending up to 150 times the flow of all the world’s rivers clockwise around the frozen continent. It connects all the other oceans, and is thought to play a key role in regulating natural climate swings that have repeatedly swept the earth for millions of years. But much is still not known about how it works, including how it might now respond to human-induced climate…

Two current satellite missions from the European Space Agency (ESA) provide data to measure Arctic sea-ice thickness. The thickness of sea ice is a key parameter for many scientific and operational applications: But in contrast to the sea-ice coverage, measuring the thickness with satellites has always been challenging. 

“Microbiology of global change” is the name of the research area that explores microbial responses to global warming, natural resource depletion, and environmental pollution, as well as feedback mechanisms and functions in climate change. The internationally respected journal “Nature Reviews Microbiology” asked Prof Antje Boetius for her thoughts on the area:“Given the fact that microorganisms have significant effects on our planet’s material flows, productivity and health, not to mention on us human beings, this field of research will provide essential…

Today the members of the PETA-CARB team at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam have every reason to celebrate, as they were recently honoured with a brand-new award: the Ralf Dahrendorf Prize for the European Research Area, which recognises outstanding engagement in key EU research projects, as well as the motivation to share the project outcomes with the public. The prize, which is awarded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, went to a total of six recipients, each of which will…

The fate of permafrost - soil that is frozen for 2 or more years - is of huge importance for the global climate because of the large amounts of organic carbon stored in it, which can be released into the atmosphere as these soils start to thaw. 

The Helmholtz Climate Initiative „Regional Climate Change“ (REKLIM) invites to the 2nd International Conference „Our Climate - Our Future: Regional Perspectives on a Global Challenge“. Abstracts can be still submitted by May 31st.

For years now, scientists have been investigating how the gradual thawing of near-surface permafrost, which takes place in the uppermost layers of Arctic soils and in the course of decades, will affect the release of previously frozen carbon to the atmosphere. Now an international team of researchers, including AWI researcher Prof Guido Grosse, has underscored the urgent nature of another phenomenon, which has only been sporadically investigated: the abrupt thawing of ice-rich permafrost, which can transform entire landscapes in only months of years…

The oceans are virtually as important as land-based ecosystems for human beings. Further, since the changes taking place underwater are far less visible than those on land, it was all the more important that the IPBES pay due attention to the oceans in its Global Assessment report. In the following, we present a commentary by Julian Gutt, one of the report’s lead authors and a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). 

From the Arctic to the North Sea: this year’s German Norwegian Ocean Forum was held in Bremen’s Übersee Museum. The spotlight topic of the symposium, which was jointly organised by the AWI, Innovation Norway, and the Royal Norwegian Embassy, was ‘The sustainable future of our oceans’. AWI Director Antje Boetius moderated the event.