Archive of News and Press Releases
The last week at sea
After our storm on last Friday, the sea only calmed down very slowly and station work was only possible with two CTD stations in the late night towards Saturday. The deployments were made about 60 km to the West of the spreading centre on its flank. There, the seafloor is parted by North-South orientated, parallel faults covered by young sediment, and we discovered both in the sediments as well as in the water column indications for fluid circulation in the Parasound recordings.
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An international team of young researchers on board the Polarstern
25 young scientists from around the globe are currently taking part in a month-long expedition from the Falkland Islands to Bremerhaven on board the research icebreaker Polarstern as part of a summer school. On the ‘South-North Atlantic Training Transect’ they will gain unique insights into the marine sciences and engage in short projects on interactions between the ocean, atmosphere and climate.
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A warming Arctic produces weather extremes in our latitudes
Atmospheric researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have now developed a climate model that can accurately depict the frequently observed winding course of the jet stream, a major air current over the Northern Hemisphere. The breakthrough came when the scientists combined their global climate model with a new machine learning algorithm on ozone chemistry. Using their new combo-model, they can now show that the jet stream’s wavelike course in winter and subsequent extreme weather conditions cold…
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The expedition‘s stormy
The rapid changes in weather condition, which hit us last weekend, was exemplaric for the entire week. While were able to achieve the 450th dive of MARUM ROV QUEST (Fig. 2) on the ridge segment E2 of the East Scotia Ridge on Saturday, the storm on Sunday, which we endured in the ailee of Zavodovski Island, showed us that Antarctic winter has started.
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Permafrost comics awarded
AWI scientist Michael Fritz receives this year's Potsdam Prize for Science Communication for the project "Es taut!: Frozen Ground Cartoons". The comics were created in cooperation with artists.
Antje Boetius is the patron of the 2019 photo festival »horizonte zingst«
As a deep-sea researcher and Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Antje Boetius has explored oceans around the globe. This year, for the first time she is also supporting the environmental photo festival »horizonte zingst«. In her role as festival patron, she hopes the gripping images will help raise awareness for environmental concerns
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Award for permafrost expert
Prize for AWI scientist Ingmar Nitze: As part of this years Publication Award of the Leibniz Kolleg in Potsdam, the permafrost expert has been announced as a laureate. The yearly confered promotion supports young scientists of mathematics and natural sciences.
To the smoking volcano of Saunders Island
Like last week, we spent the sixth week in the southernmost area of the South Sandwich Plate, from the back-arc spreading ridge of the segments 8 and 9 in the west to the Kemp Caldera. The volcano of Kemp Caldera is part of the collision zone with the South American plate to the East. A look to our expedition logo shows symbolically the spreading ridge on the left and flowing to the right the volcanoes, fore-arc area and subduction zone.
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The next milestone in Russian-German Arctic research
With the return of the Russian research icebreaker “Akademik Treshnikov” to the port of Murmansk, Russia, another successful chapter in Russian-German collaborative Arctic research drew to a close. On 20 March 2019 the ship embarked on the Russian expedition TRANSARCTIC 2019 in the Barents Sea and returned on 20 May 2019, with seven researchers from German partner institutions (AWI, GEOMAR, University of Bremen and University of Kiel) on board.
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Expedition to the Most Powerful Ocean Current
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the planet’s most powerful and arguably most important. It is the only one to flow clear around the globe without getting diverted by any landmass, sending up to 150 times the flow of all the world’s rivers clockwise around the frozen continent. It connects all the other oceans, and is thought to play a key role in regulating natural climate swings that have repeatedly swept the earth for millions of years. But much is still not known about how it works, including how it might now respond to human-induced climate…
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