• Eyewitnesses to Arctic Change

      ArcWatch 1
      On Thursday, 3 August 2023, the research vessel Polarstern is scheduled to set off from Tromsø, Norway, towards the North Pole. For two months, a good fifty scientific expedition participants

    • Sediment echosounder

      Our research vessel RV Polarstern is equipped with a PARASOUND DS2 sediment echosounder (ATLAS Hydrographic GmbH, Bremen). This echosounder generates two primary

    • Polarstern Departs on Arctic Expedition

      Research
      Today, Monday, 22 May 2023, the Research Vessel Polarstern will leave her homeport in Bremerhaven, catching the afternoon high tide at ca 3:00 pm and bound for the Arctic Ocean. The four-week

    • Infrared Based Whale Detection - AWI OZA

      revision too expensive, development discontinued. ANT 23.2 Polarstern Nov 2005 - Dec 2005 Use of same cameras facing strictly forward, but mounted under roof of Polarstern's crow's nest and passively [...] poor (unstable) video data impeding automatic whale detections. Polarstern PS115/1 Aug - Sep 2018 ~60 TByte data collected Ship based operation of FIRST-Navy infrared imager on RV Polarstern for marine [...] On occasion, ship's antennas cause frequent false positives. Polarstern MOSAiC Ship based operation of FIRST-Navy infrared imager on RV Polarstern for polar bear surveillance. PS128 765 h operational

    • Record low sea ice cover in the Antarctic

      the end of February. The current expedition team on board RV Polarstern has just reported virtually ice-free conditions in its current research area, the Bellingshausen Sea.

    • Polar underwater sounds - AWI OZA (Kopie 2)

      -2207_PALAOA (Photo: OZA AWI) Anthropogenic sound Ship noise Polarstern in sea ice (Photo: AWI) Twice a year, the German research vessel Polarstern visits the Atka bay to deliver supplies to the Neumayer

    • Polarstern Turns 40

      2022 marks the 40 th anniversary of the research icebreaker Polarstern’s commissioning. Built by a consortium combining the shipyards Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel and Werft Nobiskrug in Rendsburg [...] researchers from Germany and around the globe. In the process, the Polarstern has safely traversed 1.8 million nautical miles. The ship is currently on an expedition in the Southern Ocean.

    • Antje Boetius once again appointed Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute

      ’s history, and paved the way for the construction of the new Polarstern II. Despite the numerous crises currently facing our world, her plans for the years to come remain ambitious: she intends e.g. to

    • 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 [...] to better grasp such changes, the research teams on board the Polarstern investigated Atlantic Water Recirculation in Fram Strait and in the marginal ice zone north of Svalbard, as well as ocean/glacier

    • ARJEL

      Integrative field survey of the FramJelly project during the R/V Polarstern cruise PS126 (Graphic: Dmitrii Pantiukhin/AWI) How do jellyfish survive in the Polar Night? Which species are abundant in winter [...] campaigns: RV Heincke HE560 (2020), Walter Herwig WH440 (2020), Polarstern PS126 (FramJelly, 2021) expeditions and the AWIPEV project KOP183 (2022). Sampling for the ARJEL project was also carried out in [...] primers. Water sampling with the CTD rosette on board R/V Polarstern PS126. (Photo: Charlotte Havermans/AWI) Environmental DNA sampling in the Polar Night in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard (left: Niskin