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Scientists have been making projections of future global warming using powerful supercomputers for decades. But how accurate are these predictions? Modern climate models consider complicated interactions between millions of variables. They do this by solving a system of equations that attempt to capture the effects of the atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface and the sun on the Earth’s climate. While the projections all agree that the Earth is approaching key thresholds for dangerous warming, the details of when and how this will happen differ greatly.

Near the Filchner Ice Shelf in the south of the Antarctic Weddell Sea, a research team has found the world's largest fish breeding area known to date. A towed camera system photographed and filmed thousands of nests of icefish of the species Neopagetopsis ionah on the seabed. The density of the nests and the size of the entire breeding area suggest a total number of about 60 million icefish breeding at the time of observation. These findings provide support for the establishment of a Marine Protected Area in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. A…

Arctic coasts are characterized by sea ice, permafrost and ground ice. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which is already accelerating rapid coastal erosion. The increasing warming is affecting coast stability, sediments, carbon storage, and nutrient mobilization. Understanding the correlation of these changes is essential to improve forecasts and adaptation strategies for Arctic coasts. In a special issue of the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute describe the…

On the 6th of January, the research vessel Polarstern set off from Cape Town in South Africa for an expedition of around eight weeks to the Antarctic. Extensive preventative measures have allowed the Alfred Wegener Institute to tackle important research on former instabilities of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet despite the the COVID-19 pandemic, which will be continued on two further planned expeditions in the coming years. Interested parties can follow this and subsequent Polarstern expeditions live in a new app.

Far beneath the ice shelves of the Antarctic, there is more marine life than expected, finds a recent study in the journal Current Biology, published this week (20 December 2021). Despite occupying nearly 1.6 million km2, ice shelves are amongst the least known environments on Earth. Life has been seen in these perpetual dark, cold and still habitats on camera but has rarely been collected. 

In the summer months, sea ice from the Arctic drifts through Fram Strait into the Atlantic. Thanks to meltwater, a stable layer forms around the drifting ice atop the more salty seawater, producing significant effects on biological processes and marine organisms. In turn, this has an effect on when carbon from the atmosphere is absorbed and stored, as a team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now determined with the aid of the FRAM ocean observation system. Their findings have just been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Can meeting CO2 emission targets and thus limiting global warming prevent Antarctic ice from melting catastrophically? An international research team is preparing to drill into the sediment of the seabed deep beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf to find out.

For its 50th anniversary, the University of Bremen is organizing an online talk series to discuss how the university can help shape the major issues of our time. The next talk will take place on December 14 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. under the title "Quick, save the climate – but how?", with AWI Director Antje Boetius as guest. The event will be broadcasted via livestream.
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Under this title, AWI Director Antje Boetius will give a lecture in the new online format "Garden Talk" on December 8 at 8:30 pm. There, she will talk about the life forms under the polar ice and thus about one of the most undiscovered regions on the planet. Afterwards, she will be available to answer questions from all participants.
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Over the past decade, interest in using the marine coastal areas as a source of alternative, sustainable food production has grown significantly. A team of experts from 28 countries, including scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has launched the SeaWheat project as a part of the EU program “COST” to modernise traditional aquatic diet from the coastal seas to make them more sustainable and healthier.