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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. 

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.

A team from the Physical Oceanography section of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), led by Hongyan Xi, contributed to the recently published 9th Copernicus Ocean State Report. Coordinated by Mercator Ocean International on behalf of the European Commission, the report summarizes the latest developments in global and European ocean monitoring.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications reveals that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a key driver of global climate variability, is projected to undergo a dramatic transformation due to greenhouse warming. Using high-resolution climate models (Figure 1), a team of researchers from South Korea, the USA, Germany, and Ireland found that ENSO could intensify rapidly over the coming decades and synchronize with other major climate phenomena, reshaping global temperature and rainfall patterns by the end of the 21st century.

With temperatures hovering around minus 30 degrees, icy winds and the darkness of the polar night: winter is not the most pleasant time to navigate around the coast of Spitsbergen in a small vessel. But that is exactly what a team headed up by Prof. Charlotte Havermans and Dr. Ayla Murray from the Alfred Wegener Institute undertook in the winter of 2022. In Kongsfjord, in the west of the archipelago, the researchers took water and sediment samples and then assigned the DNA they contained to various marine organisms. This enabled them – for the first time…

Up to well into the 20th century, research shipping was strictly a male domain. In the early days of the Federal Republic of Germany, sayings such as "a woman on board brings bad luck" were still to be heard. At that time, the roles were clearly divided between the sexes and it was a time when it was not easy for women to break out of these roles and pursue their own desires. This called for pioneers who dared to do so with courage, tenacity and passion – strong and assertive women. And Irmtraud Hempel was one of them who led the way.

Extreme sea surface temperatures in 2023 resulted in high CO₂ outgassing, particularly in the North Atlantic, meaning that the global ocean absorbed less CO₂ overall. Thanks to El Niño, much less CO₂ than usual escaped into the atmosphere in the eastern Pacific, but the outgassing in the North Atlantic negated the positive effect. The fact that the ocean did not lose even more CO₂ is due to physical and biological processes that limited outgassing in spite of the record-high temperatures. It is uncertain, however, as to whether these compensating…

What are the global impacts of an ice-free Arctic? How will the Arctic develop with increasing climate warming? What does an ice-free Arctic mean for our environment and our society? These are the key questions that the “i2B - Into The Blue” project addresses.

Representatives from over 170 countries as well as from science, civil society and industry are meeting in Switzerland From 5 to 14 August, continuing the negotiations for a legally binding agreement to tackle the global plastic pollution.

A new study, led by the Lancaster University and involving the Alfred Wegener Institute, reveals how, under extreme conditions, melt water flooding underneath the ice can force its way upwards through the ice and escape at the ice sheet surface. Researchers observed this phenomenon for the first time in Greenland and described it in detail in the journal Nature Geoscience. It sheds new light on the destructive potential of meltwater stored beneath the ice sheet.