Arctic Ocean
More melt water is entering the Artic Ocean from the glaciers due to climbing temperatures. In addition, the rivers are carrying large amounts of sediment from thawing permafrost. How the [...] the Arctic Ocean will react to such changes is a very big question, which is concerning scientists around the world. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now published, together with int

Arctic Ocean
Tiny gypsum crystals can make phytoplankton so heavy that they rapidly sink, hereby transporting large quantities of carbon to the ocean’s depths. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute [...] Institute recently observed this phenomenon for the first time in the Arctic. As a result of this massive algal transport, in the future large amounts of nutrients could be lost from the surface waters.

look beyond the moorings and the Hausgarten into the Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The Fram Strait connects the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic. Unlike the shallow water conjunction to the Pacific [...] Arctic long-term observatory FRAM 5,000 metres seawater plus ice separate the seafloor from boisterous life in the upper water layers of the Arctic Ocean. Additionally there is a strong change between [...] deep and thus the main region for exchange of water between the Arctic and the global oceans. Due to its importance for the global ocean circulation the Fram Strait has long since been a focus area of

concentrations at the ocean floor. Using model-based simulations, they have also found an explanation for this high level of pollution. According to their findings, the two main ocean currents in Fram Strait [...] Marine Pollution
Working in the Arctic Fram Strait, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have found microplastic throughout the water column [...] microscopically small plastic particles into the region between Greenland and Spitsbergen from both the Arctic and the North Atlantic. While passing through the Strait, many particles eventually drift to the

AWI scientist Sinhué Torres-Valdés observed the nutrient chemistry of the Arctic Ocean on an expedition as part of the PEANUTS project (Primary production driven by Escalating Arctic NUTrient fluxeS). The SCRIPPS Institution of Oceanography led the expedition in 2018. The results have now been published in a paper in the journal Nature Communications. The PEANUTS project is funded by the Changing Arctic Ocean Program (CAO).

l research team is now bringing back from a Polarstern expedition to the Central Arctic. After a four-month-long Arctic season, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s research icebreaker is expected to arrive

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.

Over the past 200 years, our planet’s oceans have absorbed more than a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As a result, their acidity has increased by nearly 30 percent their [...] recently demonstrated. If this comes to pass, it could have far-reaching consequences for life in the ocean, as they report in the journal Nature.

PS93.2 Weekly Report No. 1 | 21 until 26 July 2015
On June 21 st , 46 scientists, engineers, technicians, and students coming from 10 nations embarked in sunny Tromsø to participate in the second l