News

Antarctic scientists from all over the world meet in Leuven, Belgium, from July 10th to 14th. “Scale matters” is the overarching theme of the 12th biology symposium organized by SCAR, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. From the small molecular scale, through population and large ecosystem scale, biological processes and diversity span all these levels, and the contributions are accordingly variable.

Throughout the last 800,000 years, Antarctic temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations showed a similar evolution. However, this was different during the transition to the last ice age: approximately 80,000 years ago, temperature declined, while the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere remained relatively stable. An international research team led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research has now discovered that a falling sea level may have…

The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) welcomed members of the Association for Marine Technology (GMT). The AWI is itself a member of the association for offshore and marine technology, which, among other things, is committed to the transfer of knowledge and technology between science and industry in the marine-maritime field.

During the last glacial period, within only a few decades the influence of atmospheric CO2 on the North Atlantic circulation resulted in temperature increases of up to 10 degrees Celsius in Greenland – as indicated by new climate calculations from researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Cardiff. Their study is the first to confirm that there have been situations in our planet’s history in which gradually rising CO2 concentrations have set off abrupt changes in ocean circulation and climate at “tipping points”. These sudden…

The Arctic Ocean was once a gigantic freshwater lake. Only after the land bridge between Greenland and Scotland had submerged far enough did vast quantities of salt water pour in from the Atlantic. With the help of a climate model, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have demonstrated how this process took place, allowing us for the first time to understand more accurately how Atlantic circulation as we know it today came about. The results of the study have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

It is only six centimetres long, but it plays a major role in the Antarctic ecosystem: the small crustacean Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill). It's one of the world's most abundant species and the central diet of a number of animals in the Southern Ocean. For a long time, scientists have been puzzled why the size of krill stocks fluctuates so widely. In a new study headed by Prof. Bernd Blasius and Prof. Bettina Meyer, a group of scientists from the University of Oldenburg's Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) and the…

During the last glacial period – when the ice in the Antarctic was far thicker and extended further offshore than it does today – it has been speculated that subglacial lakes existed beneath it. An international team of researchers has now successfully sampled the metre-thick sediment layers left behind by these lakes contemporary on the seafloor. This is the outcome of a study by Gerhard Kuhn and colleagues, which was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

The habitability of our planet is closely linked to the diversity of its flora and fauna – and not just on land, but also in the water. How and why is marine biodiversity responding to global change? How are these changes affecting marine ecosystems and their functions? And how can society adapt to or mitigate them? From now on, researchers will focus on these questions at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), which was officially inaugurated today at the University of Oldenburg – a step that will allow the University and…

The Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA) and the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on their future cooperation.

On Wednesday, 24 May 2017, 49 atmospheric and cloud researchers, sea-ice physicists, marine biologists and biogeochemists will embark on a joint expedition headed for Svalbard. On board the research vessel Polarstern from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) all of these disciplines are focused on just one question: How is the climate changing the Arctic? At the same time, the AWI research aircraft Polar 5 and Polar 6, launching from Longyearbyen (Svalbard), will engage in atmospheric measurement flights.