The role of clouds and warm air masses from the open ocean for the rapid warming of the Arctic is at the heart of a recent Alfred Wegener Institute project on Svalbard. The researchers are applying a new

Due to intensifying sea-ice melting in the Arctic, sunlight is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the ocean. Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behaviour

production of data set time series of variables that describe the state of the atmosphere, land, ocean and the cryosphere. Sea ice is listed as one of the 13 Essential Climate Variables and the aim of [...] group is to produce datasets of sea ice concentration sea ice thickness sea ice drift that include Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and the respective uncertainties. The data sets both parameters will consist [...] thickness time series from data of the ERS-1, ERS-2, EnviSat and CryoSat-2 radar altimeter missions of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. The production of a time-series of Antarctic sea-ice thickness is based on

project is to build an efficient integrated Arctic Observation System (iAOS) by extending, improving and unifying existing systems in the different regions of the Arctic. Contact: T. Soltwedel, C. Hasemann, I [...] European open ocean fixed point observatories and to improve access to these key installations for the broader community. These will provide multidisciplinary observations in all parts of the oceans from the [...] Purser SenseOcean (Marine sensors for the 21st Century) EU funded FP7 project Duration: 01.10.2013 - 30.09.2017 Coordinator: Denise Martin, Natural Environment Research Council, UK SenseOCEAN brings together

Earth System Models We simulate Arctic sea ice for the past, current and possible future climates, with regional sea ice-ocean and Earth System Models. Regional ocean-sea ice models have the advantage [...] al., 2014 ). We test those parameterizations in regional sea ice ocean models such as NAOSIM ( Köberle and Gerdes, 2003 ) and an Arctic model set-up of the MITgcm ( Castro-Morales et al., 2014 ). After [...] usually much coarser spatially resolved but have the advantage of simulating the atmosphere model, the ocean and the sea-ice simultaneously. Earth System Models (ESMs) additionally include vegetation and chemistry

degradation and impacts of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the oceans through case studies in the Atlantic, the Arctic and the Mediterranean. It is developing new methods for assessing the impact [...] on, aggregation, ecological function and distribution of organic compounds in the changing polar ocean. We aim to understand the function of marine organic compounds, both, as diagnostic markers to decode [...] for DOM characterization, which allows direct injection of original (i.e., non-extracted), filtered ocean water samples at native salt and DOC concentrations. To achieve this, we used reversed-phase liquid

in the Arctic and Antarctic, monitoring ocean currents at our deep-sea moorings in the Fram Strait and the Weddell Sea, and the data from our sea-ice buoys drifting through the Antarctic and Arctic Oceans [...] planet’s hotspots As polar researchers, we have the privilege of working in unique habitats. The Arctic can be breathtaking: where else can you see the rugged glacial fjords of Greenland and Spitsbergen [...] striding across ice floes, or the stark contrasts produced by warm waters from the subtropics and Arctic cold fronts? Antarctic expeditions on board the research icebreaker Polarstern take us to the stormy

fluxes in ice covered oceans (Photo: Stefanie Arndt, AWI) The radiation budget of sea ice dominates the sea-ice energy balance and the exchange of energy between the atmosphere and the ocean in ice-covered regions [...] sets from remote regions of the Arctic and Antarctic. Contact: Dr. Marcel Nicolaus Dr. Christian Katlein Dr. Gerit Birnbaum Surface albedo of ice-covered regions in the Arctic and Antarctic mostly depends [...] to the atmosphere (albedo), that is absorbed by snow and sea ice, ant that is transmitted into the ocean (transmittance). We perform various radiation measurements during our field campaigns using Polarstern

Tromsö Chief Scientist: R. Stein Cruise report Programme Weekly reports Data PS87 | ARK-XXVIII/4 | Arctic Ocean, Central Basin Start: 2014-08-05, Tromsö End: 2014-10-08, Bremerhaven Chief Scientist: R. Stein [...] Chief Scientist: R. Gersonde Cruise report Programme Weekly reports Data PS72 | ARK-XXIII/3 | Arctic Ocean Start: 2008-08-12, Reykjavik End: 2008-10-17, Bremerhaven Chief Scientist: W. Jokat Cruise report

feedbacks between ocean structure and dynamics, sea ice physics, biogeochemistry, and biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean. Organic compounds in the Arctic Ocean and the deep Atlantic Ocean are derived from [...] elucidate, if the amount of dissolved organic compounds in the Arctic Ocean changed over the last decades. We also aim at quantifying the contribution of terrestrial organic matter because it represents [...] the effect of global warming on the occurrence of toxic microalgae and phycotoxins in the Arctic. The Arctic region is heavily impacted by global warming, which has an influence on the growth of planktonic