News

Antje Boetius will moderate a plenary session at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík on October 16th. The AWI director will discuss the topics  MOSAiC expedition, the IPCC report and the COP26 with AWI scientist Markus Rex and Halldór Þrgeirsson, President of the Climate Council of Iceland. The session takes place from 12:45 p.m. - 3:40 p.m. and is organized in cooperation with the AWI and the German Arctic Office. The Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic.

PAIGE - Chronologies for Polar Paleoclimate Archives is a partnership project between the AWI and Italian Polar Research Institute ISP and is led on the German side by Gesine Mollenhauer and Frank Wilhelms. The aim is to improve the chronologies of palaeoclimate archives, namely of ice and marine sediment cores. As part of the project, experts discussed the state of research at a workshop in Bologna from 6.-7.10. At the opening, the Memorandum of Understanding between AWI and ISP was signed by the directors Antje Boetius and Carlo Barbante. 

The REKLIM Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM "Regional Climate Change and People" invites on October 6th together with the University of Paris-Saclay and the French Embassy to a festive event entitled "Perceiving Arctic Change - Climate, Society and Sustainability". After lectures and a panel discussion, the official opening of the Graduate School PACCSS will take place. AWI Director Antje Boetius will officially open the event. The entire event will be streamed live from 6 p.m.

"Sustainable marine food systems" - a talk by AWI scientists Gesche Krause and Laurie Hofmann at the international "Aquaculture Europe" conference on Maderia revolves around this complex of topics. The lecture will take place on October 7th from 11.45 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. More information about the conference.

This is the title of an international Antarctic conference to be held on October 4 in Madrid - 30 years after the Madrid Protocol. It will be opened by the prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand and Spain. Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II (WG II) and head of the section Integrated Ecophysiology at the Alfred Wegener Institute, will participate in one of the three discussion formats "Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change".

How does the North Sea bind, cycle and store carbon dioxide (CO2) in form of particulate organic matter on the seafloor, and how are human activities and climate change affecting this ecosystem service. These are the key questions, researchers want to address in the BMBF-funded project APOC in the coming three years.

AWI Director Antje Boetius has been elected as one of eight new foreign scientists to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. Being elected a member of the Academy constitutes recognition of successful achievements. These could be prominent research in mathematics, natural science, engineering, social science or humanities. Antje Boetius is a member of the Class of Biosciences. The Academy has around 460 Swedish and 175 foreign members. Further information.

 

The sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean reached its annual minimum of 4.81 million square kilometres on 12 September 2021. As such, the 2021 Arctic sea-ice minimum comes in at 12th place on the negative list for absolute values. Sea ice extent in September is one of the strongest signs of climate change, experts pointed out in the recently published 6th Assessment Report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It has declined by about 40 per cent over the last four decades.

With this core question, the SILBERSALZ festival in Halle starts on September 15, uniting science and media through a combination of entertainment and conference program. As part of this diverse program, AWI Director Antje Boetius will be on site on both September 17 and 18 to discuss the topics of art and science as well as science communication. All events of the festival are free of charge.
Program and further information

On September 26th, 2019, Marcel Nicolaus, marine physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), placed an ice buoy on a floe during the passage of the Polarstern to the Central Arctic. It was the first buoy to be sent off during the MOSAiC expedition. It was part of the "Distributed Network," a large buoy network that drifted around Polarstern at distances of up to 50 kilometers and continuously and precisely monitored this area. For almost two years, the buoy was on its way until its journey now ended…