News

The sea-ice extent in the Arctic is nearing its annual minimum at the end of the melt season in September. Only circa 3.9 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean are covered by sea ice any more, according to researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen. This is only the second time that the annual minimum has dropped below four million square kilometres since satellite measurements began in 1979.

Antje Boetius gives a lecture on 13.9.19, from 18:45 on the topic "Science of Arctic Change - What the North Pole has got to do with us" at the Institut français Bremen. All interested are welcome. Organizer is the Cosmopolitan Ladies Club Bremen.

The National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) organize the conference series "Science for Future".

Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute now, for the first time, feed the results from their global models directly into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change database. The data is particularly interesting because the underlying model, developed at the AWI, depicts the sea ice and the oceans with far greater definition than conventional methods. The results are used by climate scientists and stakeholders around the globe to determine the effects of climate change on humans and the environment.

20 years ago, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) laid the “foundation stone” for a unique long-term observatory in the partly ice-covered Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard, which they call their HAUSGARTEN. The deep-sea observatory is the first, and still the only one of its kind for year-round physical, chemical and biological observations in a polar region. Here researchers investigate how a polar marine ecosystem alters in a period of global change. 

The tiny organisms cling to oil droplets and perform a great feat: As a single organism, they may produce methane from oil by a process called alkane disproportionation. Previously this was only known from symbioses between bacteria and archaea. Scientists from Joint Re­search Group for Deep-Sea Eco­logy and Tech­no­logy of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (MPI), have now found cells of this microbe called  Methanoliparia in oil reservoirs worldwide.

The rare isotope iron-60 is produced by huge star explosions. Only a small proportion comes from remote stars. Researchers have now discovered iron-60 in the Antarctic for the first time. They have been able to draw spectacular conclusions from their findings.

Over the past several years, microplastic particles have repeatedly been detected in seawater, drinking water, and even in animals. But these minute particles are also transported by the atmosphere and subsequently washed out of the air, especially by snow – and even in such remote regions as the Arctic and the Alps. This was demonstrated in a study conducted by experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute and at the Swiss WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, recently published in the journal Science Advances.

On the evening of 10 August 2019, the research vessel Polarstern will leave her homeport in Bremerhaven. The purpose of the expedition is to conduct studies at a major long-term monitoring station in the Arctic: the AWI’s Hausgarten observatory in the Fram Strait, where experts from various disciplines are investigating all aspects of the ecosystem, from the water’s surface to the ocean depths, in order to determine the impacts of climate change on biodiversity in the Arctic. After roughly a month underway, in mid-September Polarstern will reach the…

The Cody Award recognizes outstanding scientific achievement in oceanography, ocean biosciences, and earth science. It is presented by Scripps Institution of Oceanography to a scientist who has made significant contributions to his or her field of science specialty. Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, now receives the award. The Cody Award, presented biennially, consists of a gold medal and $10,000.