News

When ocean temperatures change, the natural variability of the oxygen supply and the associated biogeochemical cycles don’t respond in a lineal manner. Instead, circa 6,000 years ago a tipping point was reached relatively suddenly. This was the key finding of a study by group of researchers led by geologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which has now been published in the journal PNAS.

Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the Universities of Oldenburg and Potsdam, Germany have confirmed the existence of a new cryptic amphipod species in the North Sea. For the first time for the description of a new species, they used a level of mitogenomic information, which was normally applied in other areas of genetics. The discovery of Epimeria frankei was now published in the journal Scientific Reports. In the future, this level of molecular information could revolutionise biodiversity research.

They form the basis of the Arctic food web – and are extremely tough: even when the water becomes more acidic and the available light or temperatures change, various phytoplankton assemblages in the Arctic demonstrate undiminished productivity and biodiversity. This was the main finding presented in a study by researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, which they jointly release with their Canadian colleagues advanced online in the journal Nature Climate Change. Yet the question of whether this source of food for seals, whales and commercially…

The delegations were informed in detail about international cooperation at the site with a focus on climate and environmental research. Accompanied by Kim Holmen, International Director at the Norwegian Polar Research Institute NPI, the visit to Svalbard gave them a chance to see the effects of climate change up close.

A joint UK-US research programme launched today is one of the most detailed and extensive examinations of a massive Antarctic glacier ever undertaken. The Alfred Wegener Institute directly participated in an expedition during which researchers explored the structure of the ice and of the ground below it.

Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have recently found higher amounts of microplastic in arctic sea ice than ever before. However, the majority of particles were microscopically small. The ice samples from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean contained up to 12,000 microplastic particles per litre of sea ice. Further, the different types of plastic showed a unique footprint in the ice allowing the researchers to trace them back to possible sources. This involves the massive garbage patch in…

AWI Director Antje Boetius welcomes a delegation of the University Laval, Canada, and the french research organisation CNRS. Scientists of both institutions present current and foreseen projects and discuss on future cooperation.

The AWI-director, deep-sea scientist and leader of one of MPI’s research groups, Prof Dr Antje Boetius, receives the prestigious Vernadsky Medal for her groundbreaking contributions to biogeosciences and spearheading research on methane-based metabolisms and the marine carbon cycle.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has now announced the Lead Authors for its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), and experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) fulfil prominent roles in this regard: Prof. Hans-Otto Pörtner, an ecophysiologist at the AWI, has been Co-Chair (with Prof. Debra Roberts (South Africa) of the IPCC’s Working Group II since 2016. In addition, Dr Björn Rost and Prof. Dieter Piepenburg of the AWI have now agreed to serve as Lead Authors for individual chapters of…

On the seafloor of the shallow coastal regions north of Siberia, microorganisms produce methane when they break down plant remains. If this greenhouse gas finds its way into the water, it can also become trapped in the sea ice that forms in these coastal waters. As a result, the gas can be transported thousands of kilometres across the Arctic Ocean and released in a completely different region months later. This phenomenon is the subject of an article by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, published in the current issue of the online journal…