Archive of News and Press Releases

[Translate to English:] Batagai-Permafrost-Abbruch in Sibirien
Press releases

Oldest permafrost in Siberia discovered

While determining the age of a permafrost layer in Siberia, an international team of experts set a new record: at its deepest point, the soil is at least 650,000 years old. Yet the team’s findings, just published in the magazine Quaternary Research, also reveal how sensitive the soil is to disturbances – and how quickly it can be destroyed.
[Translate to English:] IceBird Summer
Press releases

Heat from Below: How the Ocean is Wearing Down the Arctic Sea Ice

The influx of warmer water masses from the North Atlantic into the European marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean plays a significant role in the marked decrease in sea-ice growth, especially in winter. Sea-ice physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), together with researchers from the US and Russia, now present evidence for this in two new studies, which show that heat from the Atlantic has hindered ice growth in the Barents and Kara Seas for years. Furthermore, they demonstrate that the invasion of…
Fig. 1: Diversity in marine plankton
Weekly report

Water World

As already announced in the last weekly report, today we will provide details about the work of the phyto-opticians, biogeochemists and planktologists during RV Polarstern expedition PS126. Their goal is to investigate the organisms and processes in the water column.
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Online news

Heincke Expedition searches for Microplastics

An eleven-member expedition team is currently underway in the North Atlantic with the Alfred Wegener Institute's research vessel Heincke.
Press releases

Climate change, biodiversity loss and social justice – these challenges can only be overcome together

The fight against global warming and for sustainable development can only succeed if, from now on, humankind considers the issues of climate change, biodiversity loss and social justice together, and takes them into account equally in all political decisions – globally, nationally and regionally – as well as their interactions. According to the German co-authors, this is the most important takeaway from a new workshop report on biodiversity and climate change, the first to be jointly prepared by experts from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform…
[Translate to English:] Designstudie Uthörn II
Press releases

CO2-neutral on the North Sea

The Alfred Wegener Institute is setting new standards for sustainability in German maritime shipping. On 8 June 2021 the keel for the successor to the research cutter Uthörn will be laid at the Fassmer Shipyard in Berne, Lower Saxony. The 35-metre-long cutter will be the first seagoing vessel in Germany equipped with an environmentally friendly and especially low-emission methanol-fuelled drive system.
Permafrost in Canada
Online news

How Much Carbon Will Peatlands Lose as Permafrost Thaws?

A process-based model reveals that how much carbon peatlands may lose—or accumulate—in the future varies from place to place.
Drilling camp in Antarctica
Online news

The Southern Hemisphere’s Fiery Past

An international research team has now determined that the preindustrial atmosphere contained far more aerosols from fires and slash-and-burn agriculture than indicated by previous studies. Since soot particles have a cooling effect on the Earth, some climate models may now need to be adjusted.
Fig. 1: Recovery of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle PAUL
Weekly report

With high-tech in the deep sea

For about a week we have been operating in our study area, i.e. the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) Observatory HAUSGARTEN in Fram Strait between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago.
[Translate to English:] Salpa thompsoni
Press releases

Salps fertilise the Southern Ocean more effectively than krill

Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute have, for the first time, experimentally measured the release of iron from the fecal pellets of krill and salps under natural conditions and tested its bioavailability using a natural community of microalgae in the Southern Ocean. In comparison to the fecal pellets of krill, Antarctic phytoplankton can more easily take up the micronutrient iron from those produced by salps. Observations made over the past 20 years show that, as a result of climate change, Antarctic krill are increasingly being supplanted by salps…