• Drifting with the clouds

    The role of clouds and warm air masses from the open ocean for the rapid warming of the Arctic is at the heart of a recent Alfred Wegener Institute project on Svalbard. The researchers are applying a new

  • CACOON

    to the Arctic coastal-marine environment. CACOON Background Arctic rivers annually carry around 13% of all dissolved organic carbon transported globally from land to ocean, despite the Arctic Ocean making [...] Changing Arctic Carbon cycle in the cOastal Ocean Near-shore - CACOON No other region has warmed as much or as rapidly in the past decades as the Arctic. A new project, CACOON , investigates how the ecosystems [...] 1% of the Earth’s ocean volume. Arctic shelf waters are therefore dominated by terrestrial carbon pools, so that shelf ecosystems are intimately linked to freshwater supplies. Arctic ecosystems also contain

  • MOSES

    Earth compartments. MOSES primarily targets four events: heat waves, hydrological extreme events , ocean eddies and the thawing of permafrost . Hydrological extreme events Recent global projections predict [...] the Northern Hemisphere’s land mass and a large portion of the Siberian and North American shelves. Arctic warming occurs at a much higher rate (by up to 8 to 10 times) compared to the rest of the world.

  • MarTrec_talk_Philipp_Fischer_May_2024.pdf

    Observatory in the Arctic Ocean Philipp Fischer et al. AWI Centre für Scientific Diving Photo: Gregory Tran The AWIPEV underwater observatory: a joint infrastructure of AWI and HEREON in an Arctic fjord system [...] MarTrec talk Philipp Fischer May 2024 "High-speed measurements in the Arctic: How to discriminate effects of marine heat waves and cold spells from „normal fluctuations“ in a polar shallow water ecosystem [...] Photo: Gregory Tran The AWIPEV underwater observatory: a joint infrastructure of AWI and HEREON in an Arctic fjord system (79°N) A year-round operated shallow water observatory in front of the Old Pier in Ny

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  • Snow on Sea Ice

    snow represents an important fresh water input, which affects density and salinity layers of the ocean. Besides its direct climatic impact, the snow layer also adds to the uncertainty of sea ice thickness [...] vessel. Snow buoy, deployed on sea ice (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institut) We deploy snow buoys in the Arctic and Antarctic. They are equipped with echo sounders to record changes at the snow surface. Buoy data

  • Projects

    and Risks BMBF nuArctic: Towards a better understanding of the nutrient cycles in the ‘new’ Arctic Ocean and implications for future primary productivity and carbon export OceanICU : OceanICU is a Horizon [...] produce new data, information and understanding on the role of the Ocean in the global carbon cycle. ERC OceanPeak: The global ocean carbon cycle after peak emissions: Dynamics and process attribution [...] future ocean in the Earth system – quantifying coupled cycles of carbon, oxygen, and nutrients for determining and achieving safe operating spaces with respect to tipping points Horizon 2020: OceanNETs :

  • Jellyfish may dominate the future Arctic Ocean

    under pressure. However, jellyfish in the world’s oceans could actually benefit from the rising water temperatures – also and especially in the Arctic Ocean, as researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute [...] Institute have now successfully shown. In computer models, they exposed eight widespread Arctic jellyfish species to rising temperatures, sea ice retreat and other changing environmental conditions. The result: [...] triple the size of its habitat – with potentially dramatic consequences for the marine food web and Arctic fish populations. The study was just released in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

  • high-impact journals

    Antarctic ice-bed-ocean interfaces , Nature Communications, 9, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04583-0 . Stärz, M. , Jokat, W., Knorr, G. and Lohmann, G. (2017): Threshold in North Atlantic-Arctic Ocean circulation [...] doi: 10.1038/ncomms15867 . Stein, R., Fahl, K., Gierz, P. , Niessen, F. and Lohmann, G. (2017): Arctic Ocean sea ice cover during the penultimate glacial and the last interglacial , Nature Communications [...] , Jokat, W. and Lohmann, G. (2016), Evidence for ice-free summers in the late Miocene central Arctic Ocean , Nature Communications, 7, pp. 1-13, doi: 10.1038/ncomms11148 . Abelmann, A., Gersonde, R. ,

  • Permafrost Modelling

    With our model we investigate interactions between permafrost, vegetation, snow, lakes, and the Arctic ocean. Furthermore, we use our models to gain insights into important ecosystem functions such as the [...] climatic conditions. The models allow us to investigate impactsof past and future climate changes in the Arctic. Since permafrost is usually not visible at the earth’s surface and only few measurement sites exist [...] current state of permafrost. Furthermore, permafrost models give us insights into the evolution of Arctic landscapes and help us understand how these unique ecosystems respond to natural and human-caused

  • 10 Years of Excellence

    Nippon Foundation (NF) Ocean Affairs Department, Prof. Dr Antje Boetius, as AWI Director, Dr Sophie Seeyave, representative and CEO of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO), and State Secretary [...] Centre of Excellence, around half returned to their home countries, while the others moved on to the Arctic, the Antarctic, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands or Ireland, and some stayed in Germany at the [...] we will all remain connected in the future - as researchers and as people who are committed to our oceans in times of climate change. Pedro Montoro (alumni) I am Pedro Montoro, originally from Cuba and attended