Archive of News and Press Releases
Pacific stores the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at depths of thousands of metres
An international team of researchers headed by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute has gained new insights into the carbon dioxide exchange between ocean and atmosphere, thus making a significant contribution to solving one of the great scientific mysteries of the ice ages. In the past 800,000 years of climate history, the transitions from interglacials and ice ages were always accompanied by a significant reduction in the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. It then fell from 280 to 180 ppm (parts per million). Where this large amount of…
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Training in Sediment Acoustics
On Tuesday, May 3rd, a group of 20 Masters and PhD students and 5 instructors boarded the R/V Polarstern in Las Palmas. Some of those who have already been on board from Punta Arenas for more than three weeks, took the occasion to make a short shore leave.
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Daily up and down of the plankton animals in the sea
A unique series of measurements taken over several years in the Antarctic Ocean provide new findings about the daily vertical migration of zooplankton communities: scientists of the Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries in Hamburg and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven observed changes during the year and between years. The Antarctic zooplankton is the main source of food for many fish and whale species, including the largest mammal in the world, the blue whale.
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Crossing the equator
On Tuesday last week, the route of Polarstern towards its home base crossed the equator. Shortly after that we also traversed the “atmospheric equator”, the so-called Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which is usually associated with heavy rain showers and thunderstorms.
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Through the humid southern trade winds
We are now in the second week of our cruise back to Bremerhaven and have already nearly reached the equator. For the last few days, we have experienced tropical weather conditions with temperatures around 28°C and high humidity.
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The Arctic is facing a decline in sea ice that might equal the negative record of 2012
Sea ice physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), are anticipating that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean this summer may shrink to the record low of 2012. The scientists made this projection after evaluating current satellite data about the thickness of the ice cover. The data show that the arctic sea ice was already extraordinarily thin in the summer of 2015. Comparably little new ice formed during the past winter. Today Dr Marcel Nicolaus, expert on sea ice, has presented these findings at…
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Bionic Lightweight Design researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute at Hannover Messe 2016
Researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) will introduce their latest developments in the field of bionic lightweight design at Hannover Messe from 25 to 29 April 2016. Their focus is on the ELiSE lightweight construction method, which uses structures from nature to gain a developmental edge over methods that start from scratch. The industry is currently looking for lightweight reinforcement of complex flat and 3D-components. The AWI researchers have developed and built a holo pyramid that allows them to demonstrate the different procedures to…
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Beginning the return voyage
The last cruise section of this year’s Antarctic season for Polarstern started on 10 April 2016 in Punta Arenas and will end on 12 May in Bremerhaven. Until Las Palmas, we have 14 scientists on board who are mainly studying the atmosphere above the ship. Another group takes care of the transport of king crabs. In Las Palmas 25 additional people will board our vessel for an echosound training course.
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The Expedition PS98 from Punta Arenas to Bremerhaven
The transfer cruise PS98 from Punta Arenas to Bremerhaven ends the 2015/16 summer season of Antarctic research.
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Towards the Strait of Magellan
For both crew and scientists the last week of our Polarstern expedition PS97 required everyone to dig deep. A varied geological, geophysical and oceanographic work program was accompanied, or shall we say interrupted, by two major storms.
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