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Researchers have chosen one of the most important algae of the Arctic, the Melosira arctica, as Alga of the Year. The scientists are planning to use it to study the impact of climate change. "Because so far, nobody can predict whether the Melosira will be a victim or a beneficiary of the melting sea ice, and so far nobody knows why it is the most productive alga in this inhospitable world," says biologist Dr Klaus Valentin of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). He is a member of the Phycology Section of the…

When the temperatures at the North Pole went to just above zero degrees Celsius at the end of December, not only the relatively warm temperatures of this region were unusual. The availability of weather data is not for granted but owed to the use of snow buoys, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).

Permafrost researcher Dr Jens Strauss, AWI Potsdam, was awarded "Young Scientist 2015".  With this award the chairmen of the Friends' Association acknowledge the researcher's outstanding achievements in his dissertation. 

This agreement will initiate a technology change, which includes the increasing farewell to fossil fuels and the transition to sustainable management. With these words, AWI researcher Hans-Otto Pörtner commented on the conclusion of the first global climate protection agreement in Paris.

The mean temperature of the Earth's surface has risen noticeably  over the past decades. This warming is to a large extent due to the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 that amplify the natural greenhouse effect. Observations show, however, that there has been hardly or almost no increase in the surface temperature of inland Antarctica over the same period.

This year emissions could decline by 0.6 per cent, according to researchers of the Global Carbon Project. The results appeared in the online journal Earth System Science Data.

The upcoming Saturday, 5th December 2015, the European Polar Board, the scientific project ICE-ARC and the consortium EU-PolarNet, which is managed by the Alfred Wegener Institute, host an official side event during this year’s UN climate conference. The focus of the event lies on how climate change affects the Arctic and which global consequences the changes in the High North draw with them.

The German research vessel Polarstern will arrive tomorrow in Cape Town after a five week voyage. During this training cruise from Bremerhaven to South Africa 32 international young scientists were trained in how to observe and measure the vital signs of the Atlantic Ocean.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) supports the new Transregional Collaborative Research Centre TR 172 “Arctic climate change” represented by the speaker Prof. Dr. Manfred Wendisch, meteorologist from Leipzig University, during the next four years. In January 2016 the research network will start. Research partners in the project are the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Leipzig University, the University of Bremen, the University of Cologne and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) in Leipzig. It is the first systematic large-scale…

The warming of arctic waters in the wake of climate change is likely to produce radical changes in the marine habitats of the High North. This is indicated by data from long-term observations in the Fram Strait, which researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) have now analysed. Their most important finding: even a short-term influx of warm water into the Arctic Ocean would suffice to fundamentally impact the local symbiotic communities, from the water’s surface down to the deep seas. As the authors recently reported in the journal “Ecological…