Archive of News and Press Releases
The Expedition PS97 from Punta Arenas to Punta Arenas
The cruise leg PS97 “Paleoceanography of the Drake Passage (PaleoDrake) will start on February 16, 2016 in Punta Arenas (Chile) and will end on April 8, 2016 again in Punta Arenas.
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Become an international ocean expert
The Nippon Foundation-POGO Centre of Excellence provides world class education and training courses in the field of observational oceanography. Apply now for the international scholarship.
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Farewell to East Antarctica and passage through the Weddell Sea
No – we did not forget about the four men at Drescher Inlet and left them there for overwintering. The helicopters brought them and all their equipment back to the ship last week. It was fascinating to see how they reported about their work with the typical Antarctic glaze in their clear eyes. The stories of their impressions bubbled out of their mouths like freshwater from a thawed water fall.
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Unusual cold spell in the stratosphere creates conditions for severe ozone depletion in the Arctic
Unusual weather development in the Arctic leads to ozone depletion. According to the researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, in the past weeks an extreme cold spell in the Arctic stratosphere has created conditions that might cause severe ozone depletion over the Arctic in March – if the next few weeks will not bring a significant warming.
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How stable is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet?
A future warming of the Southern Ocean caused by rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere may severely disrupt the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The result would be a rise in the global sea level by several metres. A collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have occurred during the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, a period when the polar surface temperature was around two degrees Celsius higher than today. This is the result of a series of model simulations which the researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute,…
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Several metre thick ice cocktail beneath coastal Antarctic sea ice
Sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) have developed a new method that allows them for the first time to efficiently determine the distribution and thickness of what researchers call a sub-ice platelet layer. This several metre thick layer of delicate ice crystals is predominantly found beneath coastal Antarctic sea ice, and at present knowledge about its spatial distribution is very limited. This phenomenon, which is also known as platelet ice, is of central importance in the coastal regions of the Antarctic, influencing sea ice…
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REKLIM participates in environmental exhibition of the German Federal President
The Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM ("Regionale Klimaänderungen"/Regional Climcate Change), coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, is one of 190 featured exhibitors at the 5th "Woche der Umwelt" (Week of the Environment) - an environmental exhibition of the Federal President and the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU). The event will take place on 7 and 8 June 2016 in Berlin's Schloss Bellevue and presents the topic "Environmental Protection" with its associated economic and social chances to thousands of invited guests.
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Research final
Each brilliant movie, fireworks display, symphony or football World Cup tournament (at least from a German point of view) ends with a great final. At the end of the station work everybody and every team is showing off and demonstrating what they are capable of, also on this expedition. All gear used for marine science is deployed (one by one, not simultaneously!). You must have experienced yourself the complexity of deployments and techniques and the variety of results to appreciate this. The selected photographs attached to our letters only can give you…
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Researchers measure record erosion on Alaskan riverbank
According to estimates, Alaska's thawing permafrost soils cost the USA several 100 million dollars every decade – primarily because airports, roads, pipelines and settlements require relocation as a result of sinking ground and eroding river banks. An international team of researchers has now measured riverbank erosion rates, which exceed all previous records, along the Itkillik River in Alaska's north. In a stretch of land where the ground contains a particularly large quantity of ice the Itkillik River eats into the river bank at 19 metres per year,…
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Variety of station work – science at its finest
A huge, wooden box is sitting on the deck for several days. When it reveals its content, a weather station appears, which is destined to be deployed on a solid ice floe and to keep in touch with home via satellite connection. Like everything what we deploy on ice floes we won’t see it again. However, how will it be deployed onto the ice?
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