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Scientists have discovered that an ice-binding protein (fcIBP) from the sea ice microalga does not fit in the conventional classification of ice-binding proteins, suggesting unknown mechanisms behind its antifreeze property. This finding could lead to a broader application of the antifreeze protein in food and medical industries.

Today ten scholarship holders from around the globe presented their final papers at the Wissenschaftsforum conference centre in Berlin as part of the Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography. For the past ten months, all have been engaged in a training programme addressing all oceanographic disciplines at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). To close this important chapter of their lives with due pomp and splendour, there will be a festive graduation ceremony. Representatives of the programme’s…

The new German-Russian funding programme "Helmholtz-RSF Joint Research Groups" has completed its second selection round. The Helmholtz Association and the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) have selected six further Joint Research Groups, including one with participation of the Alfred Wegener Institute.

Beavers are highly effective ecosystem engineers: if a given landscape isn’t quite to their liking, they simply rearrange the terrain. And that’s what they’ve been doing for millennia in the temperate latitudes. But now they’re expanding their territory, and can increasingly be found in the North American Arctic. A German-American research team recently investigated the ramifications of this development. According to their findings, the animals could change entire ecosystems and contribute to the thawing of permafrost soils, as they report in the journal…

The melting of glaciers on one side of the globe can trigger disintegration of glaciers on the other side of the globe, as has been presented in a recent paper by a team of AWI scientists, who investigated marine microalgae preserved in glacial deposits and subsequently used their findings to perform climate simulations. The study highlights a process with alerting consequences for modern ice sheets: continuous warming of the ocean can result in a massive loss of polar ice mass, and consequently to rapid sea level rise.

On Tuesday, 10 July 2018 the research icebreaker Polarstern will leave its homeport in Bremerhaven, headed for the Arctic. The main focus of the journey will be on long-term oceanographic measurements and biological research in the water column and on the seafloor of the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard.

This Thursday the SILBERSALZ Festival starts in Halle. For four days everything revolves around film screenings, virtual reality, apps and live performances on various scientific issues.

It could be the largest-scale Arctic research expedition of all time: in September 2019 the German research icebreaker Polarstern will depart from Tromsø, Norway and, once it has reached its destination, will spend the next year drifting through the Arctic Ocean, trapped in the ice. A total of 600 people from 17 countries, who will be supplied by other icebreakers and aircraft, will participate in the expedition – and several times that number of researchers will subsequently use the data gathered to take climate and ecosystem research to the next level.…

The Pine Island Glacier in Western Antarctica is not only one of the fastest-flowing ice streams in the Southern Hemisphere; over the past eleven years, four major icebergs have calved from its floating tongue. In February 2017, researchers on board the German research icebreaker Polarstern successfully mapped an area of seafloor previously covered by shelf ice. A comparison of these new maps with satellite images of the ice stream reveals why the glacier suddenly retreated toward the coast: at important points, it had lost contact with the ground, as…

The findings are from a major climate assessment known as the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), and are published today in Nature. It is the most complete picture of Antarctic ice sheet change to date - 84 scientists from 44 international organisations combined 24 satellite surveys to produce the assessment.