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For years, scientists have debated whether a massive, kilometre-thick ice shelf once covered the entire Arctic Ocean during the coldest phases of the Ice Ages. A new study, now published in Science Advances, questions this idea. The research team found no evidence of such a permanent, pan-Arctic ice shelf. Instead, the Arctic Ocean appears to have been covered by seasonal sea ice, allowing open water—and life—to persist even during the harshest glacial periods of the past 750,000 years. This discovery sheds new light on how the Arctic has responded to…

One of the most current topics in climate research is the impact of extreme events such as heat waves or cold spells on biological communities in ecosystems. The consequences of climate change can be seen particularly clearly in the Arctic, as the region is warming faster than the rest of the world. It therefore offers scientists a unique opportunity to better understand processes and relationships between environmental factors such as temperature, soil or nutrients and biological communities. In a recent study published in the journal Scientific…

A unique ice core is currently being examined in the Alfred Wegener Institute's ice laboratory: the oldest continuous ice core that has ever been drilled on Earth. As part of the EU-funded Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project, a research consortium set up a drilling camp on the high plateau in East Antarctica in 2019. Up until January 2025, international teams drilled over 2,800 metres of continuous ice during the Antarctic summer months. This ice core includes air bubbles that enable direct measurements of greenhouse gases from the last 1.2 million years…

Accompanied by neuroscientist Maren Urner, a group of students from the „Sustainable Transformation Design“ degree programme at FH Münster visited the AWI. Their agenda was filled with lectures on sustainability, science and science communication. Topics included, for example, the connection between the climate crisis and the food system as well as the potential that the sea offers for sustainable nutrition. Another highlight of the programme was a tour of the Centre of Aquaculture Research.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2025, the Polarstern will set sail from Tromsø, Norway, embarking on an expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next two months, an international research team will analyse the feedback effects between global warming and sea ice retreat in the Arctic Ocean. The investigations will focus on the differences in the melting of various sea ice types – representing the Arctic of the past decades, the present and the future. A parallel airborne campaign will complement the measurements and, at the outset of the expedition, the Polarstern…

Die AWI-Wissenschaftler Oliver Hauck und Björn Suckow nahmen an der North Sea Conference 2025 in Oldenburg teil und wurden dort gleich doppelt ausgezeichnet. Beim North Sea Video & Photo Contest erreichten ihre Beiträge den ersten Platz in zwei Kategorien: Ein Foto von AWI-Fotografin Esther Horvath siegte in der Kategorie „North Sea Places“. Das von Heide Matz und Carlotta Labitzke produzierte Video gewann in der Kategorie „Free for All“. Die Beiträge zeigen die Arbeit des CLANCY-Projekts zur Eindämmung der invasiven Chinesischen Wollhandkrabbe.

The Vice President of the Shanghai Ocean University, Min Jiang, has visited the AWI in Bremerhaven. The delegation was welcomed by AWI Director Maarten Boersma and Christian Bock, head of the section Integrative Ecophysiology and others. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss current projects, scientific collaboration and funding opportunities. The participants were also given an overview of the structures and departments of both institutes. Finally, they visited the NMR laboratory and the AWI's seawater circulation system.
 

The global ocean takes up about a quarter of all CO2 that humans emit into the atmosphere. The Southern Ocean is responsible for about 40% of this. However, the amount of CO2 it can uptake varies from year to year. An international research team with the participation of the Alfred Wegener Institute investigated why the uptake varies so much and was able to show that what happens in winter is crucial in explaining this variability in CO2 uptake. The study was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. 

In the last few decades, the Arctic sea ice has receded ever further, including increasingly in winter when the extent of sea ice is at its most prominent. One of the main drivers of this development is thought to be the warming of Atlantic water that flows from Europe’s Norwegian Sea into the Arctic Ocean, passing through the Barents Sea and the Fram Strait in the process. However, not all the Atlantic water flowing into the Barents Sea reaches the sea ice. Part of the Atlantic water recirculates, i.e. by changing direction and flowing back into…

During the end of the last ice age huge amounts of CO2 which were formerly stored in the deep ocean upwelled in the Southern Ocean and were released to the atmosphere. This was one of the main causes of global warming at that time. However, it is assumed that not all of the stored carbon was released into the atmosphere, but that parts were directly transported northwards by the so-called Antarctic Intermediate and Mode Water into the East Pacific. So far, however, this has not been clearly proven. Using a combination of sediment core analyses and highly…