Archive of News and Press Releases
Turning the spotlight on the Arctic
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.
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In the Benguela Upwelling Region
On the way to Cape Town we continued with our regular underway measurements, only interrupted by two full stations with CTD and plankton nets on Monday (ca. 10°S) and Thursday (20°15’S). The last CTD on Thursday was celebrated and we were a bit sad that this was the last station.
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RV Polarstern arrives in Cape Town
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.
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Across the Equator
After leaving the Cape Verde Islands, the next days were rather quiet. We had regular stations every morning with XBT mesurements and bucket samples from the slow-moving ship. As time for stations is very short on transect cruises we have to use underway measurements as much as possible. Additional measurements are obtained using instrumentse comprising of the ship’s thermosalinograph, the Ferry Box and satellite images.
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Substantial funding for Transregional Collaborative Research Centre
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…
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Warm water is mixing up life in the Arctic
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…
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Under Saharan Dust
After 13 days at sea Polarstern reached Las Palmas on the Canary Islands on the 10th November. The team of three geophysicists left the ship and six new people came on board: two technicians to test the satellite antennae system, Sören Krägefski to calibrate the EK60 Ecosounder, two people to support the TROPOS team (Leipzig Institute for Tropospheric Research) and Karin Lochte as the new cruise leader. We also had a visit of the Director and colleagues from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography IEO (Instituto Espanol de Oceanografia) and POGO, who were…
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Loss of Diversity Near Melting Coastal Glaciers
Melting glaciers are causing a loss of species diversity among benthos in the coastal waters off the Antarctic Peninsula, impacting an entire seafloor ecosystem. This has been verified in the course of repeated research dives, the results of which were recently published by experts from Argentina, Germany and Great Britain and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in a study in the journal Science Advances. The scientists believe increased levels of suspended sediment in the water to be the cause of the…
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Tribute to 3D-Printing
Our new map of the Antarctic continent and the seafloor of the Southern Ocean, which we have created with the TU Dresden’s Institute for Cartography, will be shown in the Hall of Fame of Cartography.
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Sea Ice Plays a Pivotal Role in the Arctic Methane Cycle
The ice-covered Arctic Ocean is a more important factor concerning the concentration of the greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere than previously assumed. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) report on the newly discovered interactions between the atmosphere, sea ice and the ocean in a recent online study in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports.
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