Archive of News and Press Releases
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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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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