• Bernhard Diekmann

    n ice sheets extended as far as Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg; the North Sea coast lay north of England. Today’s North Sea Basin was covered with tundra, like what we now see in eastern Siberia. Today’s [...] sed by perpetual ice in the Antarctic, and fluctuating ice extents in the Arctic, North America and Europe. The North German landscape is a legacy of the last glacial 20,000 years ago. When this period [...] Today’s Arctic, with ice-covered Greenland, Siberian permafrost and sea ice at the North Pole, is a holdover of that glacial world. But for how much longer? As geoscientists, we provide insights to help

  • Central Europe: Dry Aprils pave the way for summer droughts

    lead to a shift in the jet stream and the formation of a blocking high-pressure system over the North Sea and parts of Germany. This in turn means that the April weather in Central Europe is getting much

  • DP+PP-S5POC

    Wiegmann , Sonja (2022) Phytoplankton pigment concentrations during POLARSTERN cruise PS121 from North Sea to Fram in August to September 2019. PANGAEA , doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.941011 Bracher

  • ARJEL

    Does sea ice play a particular role in Arctic jellyfish ecology? We evaluate the role of sea ice as a habitat for jellies in order to make predictions on their potential decrease with further sea ice decline [...] DNA analyses. Such interdisciplinary surveys allow us to link distributional patterns of jellies to sea-ice and oceanographic (sub-mesoscale) features. We apply species and community distribution models [...] of jellies in the Arctic food web, their importance for higher trophic levels and their link to the sea-ice trophic pathway will be elucidated with metabarcoding and biomarker studies. We plan to conduct

  • Polarstern Returns to Bremerhaven

    The Research Vessel Polarstern was in the Arctic for the past seven weeks. There, the summertime sea-ice extent declined by ca. 40 percent over the past 40 years – making it one of the most visible impacts [...] Polarstern investigated Atlantic Water Recirculation in Fram Strait and in the marginal ice zone north of Svalbard, as well as ocean/glacier interactions off the coast of Greenland. Central research questions [...] questions included how the ice conditions, ocean heat fluxes and ocean stratification determine sea-ice melt in the marginal ice zone (between the ice free waters and the dense pack ice) and how the melt

  • New Method Makes It Possible to Measure Arctic Sea-ice Thickness, Even in Summer

    much faster than the rest of the world. With consequences for its sea ice. In order to gauge the thickness of ice masses in the North Pole region, scientists chiefly rely on satellites. But this method [...] now developed a method that, for the first time, makes it possible to identify changes in the Arctic sea-ice thickness for the years 2011 to 2021 – even during the summer months. The resultant data is especially

  • Researching the environmental impacts of deep-seabed mining

    To what extent does polymetallic nodule mining impact the ecosystem in the deep sea? This is what the MiningImpact expedition SO295 with the research vessel SONNE is investigating for the next two months [...] months in the exploration contract areas of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the North Pacific. During the collection of polymetallic nodules, the bio-active layer of the seabed is removed and the sediments

  • Torsten Kanzow

    Oceanography of Polar Seas at the Alfred Wegener Institute and Professor at the University of Bremen. Ocean currents Ocean topography of polar regions Ocean-ice sheet interaction Sea level Ocean currents [...] ecosystems in the polar seas. On the one hand they transport large amounts of heat from the mid-latitudes to the Arctic and Antarctic. Once there, this heat can delay the formation of sea ice or cause the floes [...] covering the Arctic Ocean, as well as to the sea ice in the Southern Ocean, surrounding the continent of Antarctica. On the other hand, ocean currents also transport sea ice and summer meltwater away from the

  • EnviSim4Mare

    units used for the test bodies include two spar buoys moored in the Nordergründe area (southern North Sea, northeast of the Nordergründe wind farm), a test station for material managed by the University

  • Arctic Marine Ecosystems Still Under Pressure

    Arctic. Due to rising water temperatures, many Arctic fish species are retreating farther and farther north, while species from more temperate latitudes are increasingly being sighted off the coasts of Greenland [...] Institute have now analysed scientific publications on the ecological impacts of climate change in Arctic seas released in the past ten years. Their findings: the shifting habitats have affected entire biotic