Award 2024 from the International Permafrost Association (IPA) to honor his outstanding lifelong commitment and accomplishments in permafrost research and for the permafrost research community.

effects and causing the permafrost to thaw in step with climate change. As such, taking decisive action today is all the more important if our goal is to preserve as much permafrost as possible. The study [...] Permafrost soils store large quantities of organic carbon and are often portrayed as a critical tipping element in the Earth system, which, once global warming has reached a certain level, suddenly and

Google.org for the development of an AI system that can be used to study the thawing of the Arctic permafrost even faster and more effectively.

By the end of this century, permafrost in the rapidly warming Arctic will likely emit as much carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere as a large industrial nation, and potentially more than the U.S. has emitted since the start of the industrial revolution. More information on the findings of an international team inculding scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute can be found in this press release by the Northern Arizona University...

New Study
As a result of global warming, permafrost regions around the world are thawing now. As they do, climate-relevant greenhouse gases containing carbon (carbon dioxide, methane) and nitrogen (nitrous [...] climate forecasts. Whereas substantial research has been conducted on the carbon reservoirs in permafrost, we still know comparatively little about nitrogen. A team of experts led by the Alfred Wegener

Many of the models used to make climate projections are unable to dynamically reflect permafrost. A new study involving experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute has for the first time applied an extensive [...] extensive ensemble of 17 climate models to quantify how said models portray permafrost in warm climates. Drawing on a comparison of models for a warm period during the mid-Pliocene roughly three million years [...] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the researchers conclude that the near-surface permafrost extent was less than 10 percent of that seen in the preindustrial era.

A previously underestimated risk lurks in the frozen soil of the Arctic. When the ground thaws and becomes unstable in response to climate change, it can lead to the collapse of industrial infrastruct

Permafrost
How is climate change affecting the permanently frozen soils of the Arctic? What will the consequences be for the global climate, human beings, and ecosystems? And what can be done to stop [...] an AWI group led by Moritz Langer has now created an interactive map of the past and future of permafrost. Both publications arrive at the same conclusion: to put a stop to the dangerous trends in these

Palaeoclimate
While determining the age of a permafrost layer in Siberia, an international team of experts set a new record: at its deepest point, the soil is at least 650,000 years old. Yet the team’s

Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam contribute with a factsheet on permafrost soils.