News

Climate change and the associated rising temperatures are melting more and more frozen ground in the Arctic. This dissolved matter contains large amounts of organic carbon which is flowing into the central Arctic ocean. In a new study, scientists led by Alfred-Wegener-Institute quantified how much terrestrial organic matter accumulates in the central Arctic Ocean. Using chemical fingerprints, they were able to assess how fast it degrades, thus releasing additional CO2 to the ocean. These findings are an important basis to project how inputs from land…

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) will honour AWI glaciologist Olaf Eisen with the Julia and Johannes Weertman Medal in 2026. A total of 52 people will be honoured for their important contributions to the Earth, planetary and space sciences. They will be celebrated during the EGU General Assembly 2026, which will take place from 3 to 8 May 2026. To the announcement

In a few days, the nine-member wintering team at Neumayer Station III will begin their journey to Antarctica, where they will start work at one of the world's most remote workplaces. Richard Pozgaj, Annika Pia Salveter, Matthias Hahn, Martin Maier, Isabella Hrabe de Angelis, Lasse Urban (back row, from left to right) and Gina Valerie Schulz, Lea Buse and Ingo Gerstmann (front row, from left to right) will work and live at the station for about a year.

The target set ten years ago in the Paris Climate Agreement was already very ambitious at that time and has become increasingly implausible over the years due to inadequate societal-political development and rapid warming. However, the 1.5°C limit has not yet actually been exceeded. So, is it too early for an obituary?

The ice sheet in Greenland faces many changes and one of them is hiding in plain sight - the snowy layer covering most of its surface. Normally acting as a sponge for refreezing meltwater, this layer is important for the overall fate of the ice sheet, but it’s changing in ways researchers currently do not fully understand. Now, a substantial grant from the European Research Council (ERC) enables an international consortium to investigate this problem. 

The scarcely explored region to the north of Greenland was the area of study in the last of three Arctic expeditions undertaken by the Polarstern since the end of May 2025. In the largely untraveled waters north and northeast of Greenland, a research team led by physical oceanographer Torsten Kanzow of the Alfred Wegener Institute were able to collect unique data on ocean circulation in the area. A chain of six moorings was also deployed to conduct autonomous measurements over the course of a full year. 

Nowhere on Earth is warming as quickly as the Arctic. To better understand what this could mean, more than 35 international partner organisations and eight Indigenous communities have come together over the past five years to develop an environmental observation system. This work has been conducted within the Arctic PASSION EU project, coordinated by Michael Karcher of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). At the final symposium in Potsdam, the project members presented their findings and discussed how…

A new review led by the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen – and with the participation of the Alfred Wegener Institute highlights how hydrothermal vents on the seafloor shape iron availability and influence the global oceanic element cycles. The review study, titled “Iron’s Irony,” has been published in Communications Earth & Environment. Read MARUM press release

An international study led by the University of Copenhagen and involving the Alfred Wegener Institute has discovered an important phenomenon under the Arctic sea ice that was previously thought to be impossible: So-called non-cyanobacteria can also fix nitrogen under Arctic conditions, which in turn could have an impact on the food web and the carbon budget in the cold north, as the researchers now report in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.

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…