Archive of News and Press Releases
![[Translate to English:] Fig1_SatelliteImage_Polynya_Sentinel_de.jpg](/fileadmin/_processed_/0/3/csm_Fig1_SatelliteImage_Polynya_Sentinel_de_21e49c4d67.jpg "Fig1_SatelliteImage_Polynya_Sentinel_de.jpg")
The Transpolar Drift is faltering – and sea ice is now melting before it can leave the nursery
The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic is influencing sea-ice transport across the Arctic Ocean. As experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research report in a new study, today only 20 percent of the sea ice that forms in the shallow Russian marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean actually reaches the Central Arctic, where it joins the Transpolar Drift; the remaining 80 percent of the young ice melts before it has a chance to leave its ‘nursery’. Before 2000, that number was only 50 percent. According to the…
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Western South Scotia Ridge
During the past week, science has focused on bathymetry, oceanography and heat flow/geology transects along the western end of the South Scotia Ridge between the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney Plateau. Our work was only briefly interrupted by a gale-force storm that passed through our area.
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Polar research and Europe: new challenges and opportunities
The symposium in Lisbon was attended by high-ranking representatives of the Portuguese funding organisation and the University of Lisbon. Representatives from all over Europe and the European Commission were also present. AWI Director Antje Boetius gave the keynote speech.
Powell Basin
Out of the heavy sea ice of the Weddell Sea, we have spent the past week in open water and loose sea ice in the Powell Basin. So far, we have conducted a short bathymetric survey, deployed a lander, completed an oceanographic transect and collected geological and biological samples.
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Colonisation in Slow Motion
There is a wide variety of animals living on the Arctic seabed. Attached to rocks, they feed by removing nutrients from the water using filters or tentacles. But it can take decades for these colonies to become established, and they probably don’t achieve their natural diversity until much later. These are the findings of a unique 18-year study by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which has now been published in the scientific journal “Limnology and Oceanography”.
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ICES Service Award to AWI Biologist Jennifer Dannheim
The International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) honors Jennifer Dannheim with the ICES Service Award for her work as Chair of the Working Group on Marine Benthal and Renewable Energy Developments (WGMBRED).
Further to the North and two more stations
During the last week, we continued our northward travel to the Erebus and Terror Gulf completing two more stations. Another highlight were curtesy visits between the Polarstern and the Argentinian vessel Almirante Irizar.
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Ocean sink for man-made CO2 measured
Not all of the CO2 generated during the combustion of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. The ocean and the ecosystems on land take up considerable quantities of these man-made CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere. Without this sink, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere and the extent of anthropogenic climate change would be considerably higher.
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Northward journey and the first station
During the last week, we travelled for more than 60 nautical miles to the north and only stopped our journey for the first sampling station where we deployed most of our scientific equipment. Since then, we are busy to analyse water, sediment and benthos samples or to preserve them for later onshore analyses.
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Step by step
We are now almost within sight of A68 and a survey to measure the thickness of the sea ice has already crossed A68. Unfortunately, heavy ice conditions made our progress quite cumbersome. During the past week, we literally nudged our way metre by metre through the ice. At times, our progress was so small that it did not even compensate for the displacement of the ice-drift.
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