The Arctic experiences some of the most rapid climate changes on the planet, resulting in significant sea-ice melt. This transformation exposed the Arctic Ocean to increasing sunlight, driving a 56% rise [...] nutrients and carbon into the Arctic Ocean, delivered from rivers and coastal erosion. While it might seem logical that these additional nutrients would enhance the ocean’s biological carbon pump, - boosting [...] ecosystem impoverishment are undermining the pump’s efficiency, challenging assumptions about the Arctic’s ability to store carbon in a warming world.

becoming more frequent and intense. The Arctic Ocean also suffers from this development: The absence of sea ice will lead to more extreme fluctuations in ocean temperatures, with abrupt temperature changes [...] Wegener Institute shows how marine heatwaves will also become much more intense and frequent in the Arctic in the 21st century. With drastic consequences for the ecosystem. The researchers published their

The winter growth period for sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is now over, with levels at a record low. The winter ice extent on 21 March 2025 was lower than at any time since continuous satellite recording [...] cover is over a million square kilometres below the long-term average. As in February 2025, average Arctic sea ice cover remained at an all-time low for the entire month of March, equalling the previous low

Siberian river systems into the central Arctic and the North Atlantic. This material affects Arctic biogeochemistry and ecosystems, while the fresh water itself alters ocean circulation. The Alfred Wegener Institute [...] suspended matter from the Siberian shelves across the central Arctic towards the Fram Strait channel, which connects to the Nordic Seas. This cross-Arctic flow influences the delivery of both natural substances [...] known as the Transpolar Draft, operates. It also uncovers the various factors controlling this major Arctic surface current, including warmer temperatures which could increase the spread of human-made pollutants

On 29 May 2025, the Polarstern research vessel set sail from Bremerhaven for the Arctic. The destination of the 95 expedition participants, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, is the AWI Hausgarten, a [...] y situated between Svalbard and Greenland. There they will investigate how the ecosystems of the Arctic deep sea are reacting to changing environmental conditions as a result of rapid climate change. The [...] June, will focus on benthic and plankton communities in the open water and physical changes in the ocean.

is thought to be the warming of Atlantic water that flows from Europe’s Norwegian Sea into the Arctic Ocean, passing through the Barents Sea and the Fram Strait in the process. However, not all the Atlantic [...] In the last few decades, the Arctic sea ice has receded ever further, including increasingly in winter when the extent of sea ice is at its most prominent. One of the main drivers of this development is

expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next two months, an international research team will analyse the feedback effects between global warming and sea ice retreat in the Arctic Ocean. The investigations [...] ons will focus on the differences in the melting of various sea ice types – representing the Arctic of the past decades, the present and the future. A parallel airborne campaign will complement the me

entire Arctic Ocean during the coldest phases of the Ice Ages. A new study, now published in Science Advances , questions this idea. The research team found no evidence of such a permanent, pan-Arctic ice [...] ice shelf. Instead, the Arctic Ocean appears to have been covered by seasonal sea ice, allowing open water—and life—to persist even during the harshest glacial periods of the past 750,000 years. This discovery [...] discovery sheds new light on how the Arctic has responded to climate extremes in the past—and how it may evolve in the future.

inside the ocean. They can grow as large as skyscrapers, travel thousands of kilometres and have a major impact on the transport of heat and nutrients. When they break, the surrounding ocean water is mixed [...] mixed. Oceanographer Dr Friederike Pollmann and her new Junior Researcher Group Artemics (Arctic internal wave energetics and mixing and their interdependence with sea ice in changing climate conditions) [...] conditions) at the Alfred Wegener Institute want to investigate how these waves work in the Arctic, how they are related to sea ice retreat and what this means for the future.

drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition between the autumns of 2019 and 2020. For a year, the research ship drifted through the Arctic, frozen in ice. The goal was to gain a better [...] better understanding of the complex interaction between the ocean, the ice, the atmosphere and the ecosystem. Through the MOSAiC expedition, hundreds of scientists representing institutions from across [...] significant contributions to the global understanding of climate feedback mechanisms in the central Arctic.