Archive of News and Press Releases
A bumpy start
We are still in Punta Arenas at the pier in Cabo Negro to take on fuel. Later, we need to take on kerosene for the helicopters and finish last cargo operations. If everything works according to plan, we should hopefully be on our way to Antarctica on Monday morning. However, all in good order …
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Munitions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
The bottom of the Baltic Sea is home to large quantities of sunken munitions, a legacy of the Second World War – and often very close to shore. Should we simply leave them where they are and accept the risk of their slowly releasing toxic substances, or should we instead remove them, and run the risk of their falling apart – or even exploding? Administrators and politicians face these questions when e.g. there are plans for building a new wind park, or laying an underwater cable. In the course of the international project DAIMON, researchers prepared…
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Anja Karliczek visits the Alfred Wegener Institute
At the invitation of Senator of Science Eva Quante-Brandt, and as part of her tour of the Federal States, today (Thursday, 7 February 2019) Federal Minister of Education and Research Anja Karliczek visited the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven.
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Cracks herald the calving of a large iceberg from Petermann Glacier
Cracks in the floating ice tongue of Petermann Glacier in the far northwest reaches of Greenland indicate the pending loss of another large iceberg. As glaciologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) report in a new study, the glacier’s flow rate has increased by an average of 10 percent since the calving event in 2012, during which time new cracks have also formed – a quite natural process. However, the experts’ model simulations also show that, if these ice masses truly break off, Petermann…
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Good-bye Antarctica
The scientific party and crew are facing their final big challenge: a four day long dense sequence of CTDs, Ultra Clean CTDs (Fig. 1) as well as mooring recoveries and deployments.
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Helmholtz International Fellow Award 2018 to Peter Bauer
Dr Peter Bauer, Deputy Director of the Research Department of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in the UK, has been awarded the Helmholtz International Fellow Award 2018.
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Scientific expedition heads to newly exposed Antarctic ecosystem
An international team of scientists heads to Antarctica this week to investigate a mysterious marine ecosystem that’s been hidden beneath an Antarctic ice shelf for up to 120,000 years.
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Business as usual.
Business as usual. Polarstern plows her way through the open waters of the Weddell Sea – the ice cover is at it minimum, subjectively at least – and heads for one mooring position after the other.
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Deep-sea drilling to shed new light on the stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
Over the next few months, geophysicists and geologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research will gain unprecedented insights into the climatic history of the Antarctic Ice Sheet as part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). The experts will take part in three Antarctic expeditions on board the IODP drilling ship “JOIDES Resolution”, and will lead two of the three legs. By collecting the drilled cores, the researchers hope to find evidence of how the ice masses of the Antarctic have reacted to…
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At Neumayer Station
Neumayer, finally! Polarstern took berth about 20 km north of the German Antarctic Station (officially named Neumayer Station III) at the extreme edge of the ice shelf (Fig. 1) and commences to lift one container after the other from its cargo holds onto sledges on the ice shelf to be towed by snowcats to the station.
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