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There is a wide variety of animals living on the Arctic seabed. Attached to rocks, they feed by removing nutrients from the water using filters or tentacles. But it can take decades for these colonies to become established, and they probably don’t achieve their natural diversity until much later. These are the findings of a unique 18-year study by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which has now been published in the scientific journal “Limnology and Oceanography”.

The International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) honors Jennifer Dannheim with the ICES Service Award for her work as Chair of the Working Group on Marine Benthal and Renewable Energy Developments (WGMBRED).

Not all of the CO2 generated during the combustion of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. The ocean and the ecosystems on land take up considerable quantities of these man-made CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere. Without this sink, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere and the extent of anthropogenic climate change would be considerably higher.

A few days ago, the captain and the head of the current Polarstern expedition jointly decided to abandon their efforts to reach the Larsen C Ice Shelf. Since dense sea ice and ice ridges blocked the planned route, the ship has now set course for alternative research sites further to the north.

On the evening of 6 March 2019, His Majesty King Willem-Alexander and Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands will visit the Alfred Wegener Institute as part of their tour of the State of Bremen. Dutch and German researchers will report to the royal couple on their collaborations regarding climate change, biodiversity and nature conservation, sign a joint declaration, and subsequently gather for a festive dinner.

The bottom of the Baltic Sea is home to large quantities of sunken munitions, a legacy of the Second World War – and often very close to shore. Should we simply leave them where they are and accept the risk of their slowly releasing toxic substances, or should we instead remove them, and run the risk of their falling apart – or even exploding? Administrators and politicians face these questions when e.g. there are plans for building a new wind park, or laying an underwater cable. In the course of the international project DAIMON, researchers prepared…

At the invitation of Senator of Science Eva Quante-Brandt, and as part of her tour of the Federal States, today (Thursday, 7 February 2019) Federal Minister of Education and Research Anja Karliczek visited the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven.

Cracks in the floating ice tongue of Petermann Glacier in the far northwest reaches of Greenland indicate the pending loss of another large iceberg. As glaciologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) report in a new study, the glacier’s flow rate has increased by an average of 10 percent since the calving event in 2012, during which time new cracks have also formed – a quite natural process. However, the experts’ model simulations also show that, if these ice masses truly break off, Petermann…

Dr Peter Bauer, Deputy Director of the Research Department of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in the UK, has been awarded the Helmholtz International Fellow Award 2018.

An international team of scientists heads to Antarctica this week to investigate a mysterious marine ecosystem that’s been hidden beneath an Antarctic ice shelf for up to 120,000 years.