Archive of News and Press Releases
Successful start to the program
The new Helmholtz research program "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future" was started with a digital kick-off meeting. AWI Director Antje Boetius opened the meeting in 2019/2020, Vice President of the Earth and Environment Research Area.The new research program coordinates the scientific work of seven Helmholtz research centers in the field of "Earth and Environment". The digital kick-off event is available online.
Wandering Icebergs
During glacial periods, icebergs from Antarctica drifted much further north than they do today. An international team led by Cardiff University and which included the AWI has now revealed how this was possible, and what consequences it had for the ocean. Their study found that the transport of frozen freshwater had effects in regions as far away as the Northern Hemisphere and the deep Atlantic. The impacts on the evolution of climate at that time are subject of on-going research.
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South of the Equator – North of the Roaring Forties
We continue the voyage according to the plan. We received the result of the third smear test for CoV-2 that we sent from Las Palmas to Bremerhaven. They were all negative, Antarctica here we come! We will probably arrive within short time.
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Crossing the Equator
After we had sent the 3rd CoV-2 swab from Las Palmas to Bremerhaven, Polarstern continues its journey southwards. The weather is increasingly summerly. Near the Canary Islands, the thermometer already shows 18 ° C, we pass the Cape Verde Islands at 26 ° C, a cloudless sky and a gentle swell of 2 meters from the north. The hard-earned “sea legs” can rest for now, it could really be worse.
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The new face of the Antarctic
In the future, the Antarctic could become a greener place and be colonised by new species. At the same time, some species will likely disappear. 25 researchers recently presented these and many other findings in a major international project, in which they analysed hundreds of articles on the Antarctic published in the past ten years. By doing so, the team have provided an exceptionally comprehensive assessment of the status quo and future of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean that surrounds it.
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Introduced Alga Now Transforming the Wadden Sea
The alga Vaucheria velutina has been chosen “Alga of the Year 2021”. The Phycology Section of the German Society for Plant Sciences recently elected this introduced species “due to its sudden dominance and the unforeseeable ecological impacts” that its novel appearance in the northern Wadden Sea could entail. Mud gets trapped in the tube-like filaments of this alga, while other species of Vaucheria only thrive in salt marshes. As a result, lugworm burrows become clogged, and this eventually is transforming the Wadden Sea ecosystem. Coastal scientist Prof…
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Whale Song Reveals Behavioural Patterns of Antarctic Minke Whales and Humpback Whales in the Weddell Sea
Until recently, what we knew about the lives of baleen whales in the Southern Ocean was chiefly based on research conducted during the Antarctic summer. The reason: in the winter, there were virtually no biologists on site to watch for the animals. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have now used permanently installed underwater microphones, which have been recording for the past nine years, to successfully gather and analyse whale observation data from the Weddell Sea. The audio recordings…
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Back to the Roots of Antarctic Research
This year, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Neumayer Station III will be exclusively supplied by sea. The research vessel Polarstern will transport– as usual – materials and fuel to the Antarctic. However, due to the coronavirus, this season all the staff who will work at the station will also travel to the Southern Continent by ship.
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AWI Director speaks at online conference
“Making theatre in a time of global crisis” - that was the title of the international online conference of the Open University of Cyprus. AWI Director Antje Boetius gave a keynote on the subject of “The tragedy of climate change, the utopia of the ark and how we are all in this play”. The full conference is available online.
Central Europe: Dry Aprils pave the way for summer droughts
In the past 20 years, Central Europe has experienced six summer heat waves and droughts. Until now, however, it was unclear what factors led to these extreme events. Researchers from two Helmholtz Centres (AWI & UFZ) have now discovered that in Central Europe, temperature and precipitation patterns in April play a vital role in determining whether or not the soils are drier than average in the following summer. If the April is too warm, with little precipitation, a large proportion of the moisture stored in the soil evaporates, making a summer drought…
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