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There are two reasons for celebration today at the Franco-German Arctic research station AWIPEV on Spitsbergen: firstly, the scientific community at the world’s northernmost research location marks the 10th year of cooperation between the German Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the French Institut Polaire Paul Emile Victor (IPEV). Secondly, the station is today the first meteorological facility in the world to be awarded with the seal of quality of GRUAN, the climate data network, the objective of which…

Permafrost experts of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research are currently conducting a multi-week spring expedition to the Lena Delta where they are investigating the interaction between the atmosphere, snow cover and the frozen earth of the tundra. That they are able to live and conduct their research at less than spring temperatures of up to minus 30 degrees Celsius is attributable to the new Russian research station “Samoylov”. The impressive building was erected at the initiative of the Russian head of state…

The Land of Lower Saxony is promoting a pilot project on the settlement of the European lobster in the “Riffgat“ offshore windpark with just under EUR 700,000. Researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, are now starting on the rearing of 3,000 lobsters which they will be releasing in 2014. They wish to investigate whether lobsters successfully settle between the wind turbines.

Researchers have known for some years that the Atlantic cod beats the retreat in the direction of the Arctic when the waters in its traditional habitat become too warm. In summer, shoals from the Atlantic Ocean, for example, are now moving up as far as Spitsbergen into the waters the Arctic cod calls its own. In the next two and a half years, biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, together with scientists from Kiel, Bremen, Düsseldorf and Münster, will be seeking to discover the consequences of this…

During the 3rd REKLIM science workshop in Bad Honnef, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, today present the new German internet platform www.meereisportal.de which they have developed together with colleagues from the University of Bremen. As a German-language web platform, the portal offers daily updated sea ice charts of the Arctic and Antarctic in addition to a wealth of background information on the subject of sea ice.

Reliable information on the depth and floor structure of the Southern Ocean has so far been available for only few coastal regions of the Antarctic. An international team of scientists under the leadership of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, has for the first time succeeded in creating a digital map of the entire Antarctic seafloor. The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) for the first time shows the detailed topography of the seafloor for the entire area south of 60°S. An article…

Atmospheric carbon dioxide and the Antarctic temperature increased synchronously during the last deglacial warming 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. A European team of researchers comes to this conclusion after having re-analysed the age of the enclosed air bubbles in the Antarctic ice core EPICA Dome C. The study, in which the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, was involved, appeared now in the scientific journal Science.

Dr. Bodil Bluhm from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and deep sea researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, received the 2012 Alexander von Humboldt Memorial Award, Thursday, 21 February 2013, in Frankfurt am Main. The group of researchers investigated the biodiversity in the Artic deep sea and extended the list of known deep sea dwellers by over 400 new species. The Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (Senckenberg Nature Research Society) honours the scientists because with this work they…

Current measurements of the ESA ice thickness satellite CryoSat-2 have shown that the total mass of the Arctic sea ice was 36 per cent smaller last autumn than during the same period in the years 2003 to 2008. Five years ago the autumn ice volumes averaged 11900 km3. But in the second quarter of 2012 they had declined to 7600 km3. This conclusion is reached by an international research team after comparing the CryoSat data of the past two years with measurements of a former NASA satellite and with the results of sea ice investigations of the Alfred…

Huge quantities of algae are growing on the underside of sea ice in the Central Arctic: in 2012 the ice algae Melosira arctica was responsible for almost half the primary production in this area. When the ice melts, as was the case during the ice minimum in 2012, these algae sink rapidly to the bottom of the sea at a depth of several thousands of metres. Deep-sea animals such as sea cucumbers and brittle stars feed on the algae, and bacteria metabolise what’s left, consuming the oxygen in the sea bed. This short-term reaction of the deep-sea ecosystem to…