Archive of News and Press Releases
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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Approach through the A23A polynya to Ronne Depot
A23A: The Filchner Ice Shelf once had a pointed edge. This is sometimes referred to as the “Horn von Druzhnaya“ - named after a former Russian summer camp which was sited there. The horn broke off back in 1986 and disintegrated into three large fragments that drifted offshore. The two smaller fragments (A22+A24) embarked on a journey around Antarctica and ‘merged’ with the Southern Ocean. The largest fragment A23A ran aground on Berkner Bank. This iceberg is still resting there today, after having been labelled ‘A23A’ for identification purposes.
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Happy birthday, snow buoys!
Since January 2014 two snow depth buoys deliver continuously information about the snow depth on Antarctic sea ice. During this time they traveled 5200 kilometres and each took more than 17500 measurements along the route.
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Official Opening of Palau Atmospheric Observatory
Today the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Institute for Environmental Physics of the University Bremen officially open their Palau Atmospheric Observatory at the Campus of the Palau Community College (PCC). The new observatory is part of the European climate research project StratoClim, a consortium of 28 European research organisations led by AWI, and is operated in close collaboration with the PCC.
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Roofing Ceremony at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam
The construction work on the new annexe of the AWI Potsdam (Telegrafenberg) is right on schedule. AWI's construction project manager Elke Meißner announced this good news at the official topping-out ceremony in Potsdam yesterday.
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Helmholtz Association promotes business start-ups
The Biological Institute Helgoland of the Alfred Wegner Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has been breeding lobsters for years and has developed a special hatchery system. The animals and their habitats have been extensively investigated.
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The New Year‘s Day profile and the truth uncovered by the corer
The New Year started immediately with comprehensive station work. Occasionally, however, you could get the impression that Neptune was unhappy with this work being carried out in his private home.
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Micro-plastic particles in edible fish and herbivores
Micro-plastic particles pose a risk not only to sea birds, whales and organisms at the bottom of the sea. In two new studies, scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute Hemholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) show that plastic waste is also eaten by nautili as well as North and Baltic Sea fish such as cod and mackerel.
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Alga of the Year 2016: Ice alga Melosira arctica – winner or loser of climate change?
Researchers have chosen one of the most important algae of the Arctic, the Melosira arctica, as Alga of the Year. The scientists are planning to use it to study the impact of climate change. "Because so far, nobody can predict whether the Melosira will be a victim or a beneficiary of the melting sea ice, and so far nobody knows why it is the most productive alga in this inhospitable world," says biologist Dr Klaus Valentin of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). He is a member of the Phycology Section of the…
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AWI snow buoys provide important weather information from the North Pole
When the temperatures at the North Pole went to just above zero degrees Celsius at the end of December, not only the relatively warm temperatures of this region were unusual. The availability of weather data is not for granted but owed to the use of snow buoys, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
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