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The Antarctic deep sea gets colder, which might stimulate the circulation of the oceanic water masses. This is the first result of the Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile.

Ice cores are essential for climate research, because they represent the only archive which allows direct measurements of atmospheric composition and greenhouse gas concentrations in the past. Using novel isotopic studies, scientists from the European Project for Ice Coring In Antarctica (EPICA) were now able to identify the most important processes responsible for changes in natural methane concentrations over the transition from the last ice age into our warm period. The study now published in the scientific magazine nature shows that wetland regions…

For the first time, a German has taken part in a Russian drift expedition. Jürgen Graeser, a 49-year-old scientific technician of the Potsdam Research Unit of the Alfred Wegener Institute, has spent seven months on an ice floe and gained observational data from a region, which is normally inaccessible during the Arctic winter.

A new project at the Alfred Wegener Institute dealing with the impact of climate change on marine phytoplankton will be funded by the European Research Council ERC with 1.4 million Euros. With his project "PhytoChange" Dr. Björn Rost was among the 3% of successful applicants for the Independent Investigator Grant and succeeded against more than 9,000 competitors from all over Europe.

The research project EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) is one of this year’s winners of the Descartes Prize for Research awarded by the European Union on the 12th of March in Brussels. The Descartes Prize for Research is endowed by 1.36 million Euro in total and is awarded to up to four European teams each year for outstanding transnational projects in natural sciences and humanities.

Still too much uncertainty in today’s climate models

Scientists present the most important results of polar and climate research at the 23rd International Polar Meeting in Münster from March 10 – 14, 2008.

Press conference on March 10 at 01:00 p.m.

On Sunday morning one of the two helicopters of the German research vessel “Polarstern” crashed near the German Antarctic research station Neumayer II. Two people have been killed, three injured.

In the Southern Ocean, large quantities of surface-drifting plankton algae are able to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide content of the surface waters, which can affect the global carbon dioxide cycle. This is one of the results from an Antarctic expedition which has just drawn to a close in Cape Town on February 4, and which was led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, part of the Helmholtz Association.

At 2.20 am local time, the research icebreaker Polarstern reached the landing spot at the edge of the Ekstrom Ice Shelf in the Antarctic. After several days of ice breaking, a newly created navigation channel through the compact sea ice finally allowed access to a suitable docking location for the freighter Naja Arctica. The vessel has been appointed by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, part of the Helmholz Association, to transport the new research station Neumayer III to the Antarctic, and is expected to begin discharge of…