• Polarstern Turns 40

      combining the shipyards Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel and Werft Nobiskrug in Rendsburg, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s flagship has successfully completed more than 130 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic

    • Antje Boetius and Markus Rex accept Arctic Circle Prize

      Arctic Circle Prize
      The Alfred Wegener Institute and the MOSAiC research expedition were awarded the Arctic Circle Prize on Saturday, 15 October 2022 in Reykjavik. With the prize, the international

    • Sustainable collaboration: Using the AWI’s polar aircraft in the Harz

      beetle infestations are causing unprecedented damage to the forest. Sea-ice experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute are now helping to quantify the damage and contributing to the success of reforestation

    • Retrieving Climate History from the Ice

      million years. Today, the consortium Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice (BE-OI), led by Olaf Eisen from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, presented its

    • The “Plastification” of the Ocean

      A study released by WWF Germany and the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) highlights the serious scale of the global plastic crisis and summarises the current state of knowledge concerning the effects of

    • Beyond EPICA explores the climate of the past – drilling commences

      the Antarctic, which contains climate data from the past 1.5 million years. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute make up part of the team. Initial drilling is about to begin.

    • Meltwater influences ecosystems in the Arctic Ocean

      on when carbon from the atmosphere is absorbed and stored, as a team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now determined with the aid of the FRAM ocean observation system. Their findings

    • Research vessel Polarstern visits Australia for the first time

      that are new territory even for the Polarstern: Between two expeditions to East Antarctica, the Alfred Wegener Institute's research icebreaker reached Hobart in Tasmania on 30 January 2024 and will remain

    • Arctic ice algae heavily contaminated with microplastics

      thus explain the high microplastic concentrations in the sediment there. Researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have now reported this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

    • 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