Archive of News and Press Releases
MOSES Expedition in Canada
A team of scientists and engineers from AWI and GEOMAR started on an expedition to the Canadian Arctic to investigate thawing permafrost. Read their reports!
Antje Boetius at Offshore Economic Forum
AWI director with her talk „Marine life – how to protect and conserve our biodiversity“ at the Offshore Economic Forum on Helgoland island.
Surprising ice conditions favor measurements further north
The second half of our cruise started with a northwesterly directed transit. To follow the originally planned seismic profiles we would have had to cross an ice field of approximately 40 nautical miles.
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Prof. Antje Boetius receives the 2018 German Environmental Award
The 2018 German Environmental Award goes to Antje Boetius and a team of wastewater experts from Leipzig. The Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is glad to see the deep seas and polar regions, the last great expanses of unspoiled nature, attracting more attention. Helmholtz President Prof. Otmar D. Wiestler has praised Boetius as a strong advocate for preserving our oceans.
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Geophysics in the fog and an exciting sediment core
In week two of our four weeks of expedition we have continued our reflexion seismic work in the Northern Greenland Sea.
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How Arctic lakes are accelerating climate change
In the future, climate change could abruptly increase the amount of methane released by lakes in the permafrost regions of the Arctic. The explanation: because of thawing permafrost, these lakes are expanding, and below them the water is gnawing away deeper and deeper into the previously frozen soil where microbes now can produce methane. An international research team, including experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, has now determined that the rapid thaw under lakes has been neglected in models so far and that bacterial decomposition of organic…
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Transit from Tromsø and first research operations in the Northeast Greenland area
The cruise PS115.1 on Polarstern focuses on a geoscientific research program, which has the aim to clarify the geological development of the northern North Atlantic and the shelf area of the surrounding regions.
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Mooring Work on Foggy Days
After two long weeks of intense work we can be more than happy with what we have achieved! All our instruments worked really well, we took and analysed lots of water and sediment samples, recorded hundreds of pictures from the water column and of the sea floor so as to document life in the deep sea and we recovered almost a hundred instruments which were continuously recording water mass and current properties for the past two years.
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Questioning conventional understanding of antifreeze proteins
Scientists have discovered that an ice-binding protein (fcIBP) from the sea ice microalga does not fit in the conventional classification of ice-binding proteins, suggesting unknown mechanisms behind its antifreeze property. This finding could lead to a broader application of the antifreeze protein in food and medical industries.
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Ten scholarship holders in oceanography honoured
Today ten scholarship holders from around the globe presented their final papers at the Wissenschaftsforum conference centre in Berlin as part of the Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography. For the past ten months, all have been engaged in a training programme addressing all oceanographic disciplines at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). To close this important chapter of their lives with due pomp and splendour, there will be a festive graduation ceremony. Representatives of the programme’s…
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