• Infrared Based Whale Detection - AWI OZA

    Polar bear mother and cup in the Arctic ocean Automatic Marine Mammal Mitigation by Infrared Imaging Use of loud seismic airguns and naval sonars in marine surveys is feared to potentially injure whales [...] adjustment. ARK 27.3 Aug - Oct 2012 1563h operational Operation of FIRST-Navy infrared imager in the Arctic Ocean. (+) Successful operation of sensor for entire expedtion without any member of the IR team on [...] hindrance which is less prevalent in off-shore seismic and renewable energy construction settings. Arctic Ocean PS101 Sep-Oct 2016 Ship based operation of FIRST-Navy infrared imager on RV Polarstern. (+) O

  • 30 years of AWI airborne survey in the Arctic

    Research aircraft from the Alfred Wegener Institute have been surveying the ice-covered Arctic Ocean for 30 years. The immense effort of the past 52 expeditions has paid off: 40,000 km of measurement data [...] aeroplane- and helicopter-based measurement series in the world that has been carried out in the Arctic over such a long period. Currently, two Basler BT-67 aircraft are in operation: the Polar 5 and Polar

  • Polarstern Departs on Arctic Expedition

    the Arctic Ocean. The four-week expedition, slated to end on 19 July in Tromsø, Norway, will focus on extended ecological fieldwork at the AWI’s deep-sea observatory Hausgarten and at the FRAM Ocean Observing

  • Microplastics

    the buoyancy and stickiness of floating microplastic particles leading to an export to the deeper ocean and sediments. Meanwhile, scientists and authorities worldwide have recognized the massive accumulation [...] stipend), Sebastian Primpke and Gunnar Gerdts) Fram Pollution Observatory / Microplastics in the Arctic (in-house project; PIs: Melanie Bergmann, Ilka Peeken and Gunnar Gerdts) “Microplastics Reactor” [...] Defining the baselines and standards for microplastics analyses in European waters); www.jpi-oceans.eu/ecological-aspects-microplastics (PIs: Sebastian Primpke and Gunnar Gerdts) WT.SH project “Size

  • Eyewitnesses to Arctic Change

    of sea ice retreat on the entire ocean system from the surface to the deep sea. Eleven years ago, Antje Boetius was part of the largest ever sea ice minumum in the Arctic and its consequences for life in [...] the North Pole. For two months, a good fifty scientific expedition participants will explore the Arctic in transition as sea ice extent reaches its annual minimum in September. They will explore the biology [...] in the deep sea. Now she is returning with her team to compare the state of the Arctic today - also with the data from the MOSAiC expedition 2019/20.

  • Climate change threatens Arctic polar cod stocks

    Arctic cod is the most abundant fish in the Arctic Ocean. It is an important food source for Arctic marine mammals and plays an important role in the self-sufficiency of the Inuit. An international study [...] now evaluated the most important scientific work on Arctic cod of the past decades. The conclusion: Above all, the already advanced decline in arctic sea ice cover as a result of man-made climate change

  • Due to sea-ice retreat, zooplankton could remain in the deep longer

    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

  • The changing Arctic Ocean

    After eventful and busy months, the Arctic season ends this weekend with the Polarstern expedition called ArcWatch-1. The team of almost 100 crew and scientists measured sea ice thickness and properties [...] properties, recorded the currents and chemical properties of the ocean and investigated life in and under the ice, in the open water and at the bottom of the deep sea. Their data show significant changes compared [...] on 20 September there was the world's first livestream of an ROV under-ice dive from the Central Arctic.

  • Projects

    atmosphere-ocean interactions Atmosphere-ocean interactions at high latitudes are thought to play a key role in past atmospheric CO2 variability by controlling the sea-ice field, upper ocean physical parameters [...] in the Arctic, Topic: ERC-2018-COG AGENSI, an ERC Horizon 2020 project led by Stijn de Schepper (Bergen University, Norway), takes an innovative approach to generate essential knowledge on Arctic sea ice [...] the Arctic and global climate state. If greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked and further increase, summer sea ice loss may pass a critical threshold that could drastically transform the Arctic as we

  • Mobile benthic Systems

    within one year due to the self-discharge of the battery in -1.75°C bottom waters of the deep Arctic Ocean. TRAMPER can be deployed with pin-point accuracy by means of a video-controlled cabled launching [...] crawler for long-term benthic oxygen flux studies in remote deep sea ecosystems , OCEANS 2016 MTS/IEEE Monterey, doi: 10.1109/OCEANS.2016.776121.