News

In the central Arctic the proportion of old, thick sea ice has declined significantly. Instead, the ice cover now largely consists of thin, one-year-old floes. This is one of the results that scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association brought back from the 26th Arctic expedition of the research vessel Polarstern.

A group of leading climate research organisations from eight European countries established the European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA) in the European Parliament yesterday. Prof. Dr. Karin Lochte, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, signed the cooperation agreement on behalf of all research centres of the Helmholtz Association that conduct climate research.

An international team of scientists has unravelled how the first ozone hole over the Arctic formed last spring. A comprehensive analysis of the unusually high ozone depletion in March/April 2011 has now been published in advance in the online issue of the journal “Nature”.

In a stringent selection procedure the Helmholtz Association has chosen 20 junior scientists, who can now set up their own research group at one of the 17 Helmholtz centres. Three of the approved applications came from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, which thus achieved above average success.

Earth warming will presumably not lead to a permanent El Niño state in the South Pacific Ocean. This is the conclusion drawn by an international team of researchers after it investigated 50-million-year-old clam shells and wood from the Antarctic. The growth rings of these fossils indicate that there was also a climate rhythm over the South Pacific during the last prolonged interglacial phase of the Earth’s history resembling the present-day interplay of El Niño and La Niña.

The extent of sea ice in the Arctic has substantially declined to a possibly record-breaking magnitude this summer so that both the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage are navigable. For climate scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research these changes in the northern polar region are a good reason to conduct research on the prospects and consequences of increased commercial use of the Arctic. ACCESS is the name of this forward-looking project whose second workshop takes place in Bremen on 5 and 6 September.

You can’t get any “higher”: on 22 August 2011 the research icebreaker Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association reaches the North Pole. The aim of he current expedition is to document changes in the far north. Thus, the researchers on board are conducting an extensive investigation programme in the water, ice and air at the northernmost point on the Earth. The little sea ice cover makes the route via the pole to the investigation area in the Canadian Arctic possible.

For the first time researchers have examined on a global scale how calcified algae in their natural habitat react to increasing acidification due to higher marine uptake of carbon dioxide.

On coming Wednesday, 15 June, the research vessel Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association will set off on its 26th arctic expedition. Over 130 scientists from research institutions in six countries will take part in three legs of the voyage.

The research vessel Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association will arrive back at its homeport of Bremerhaven after a seven-month expedition on Friday, 20 May. Nearly 200 researchers from institutes in 15 countries took part in the expedition.