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 back in Bremerhaven

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 [...] to pass, it could have far-reaching consequences for life in the ocean, as they report in the journal Nature.

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 [...] findings, the two main ocean currents in Fram Strait transport the 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 seafloor, where they accumulate.

we see on the surface, there are also waves that form inside the ocean. They can grow as large as skyscrapers, travel thousands of kilometres and have a major impact on the transport of heat and nutrients. When they break, the surrounding ocean water is mixed. Oceanographer Dr Friederike Pollmann and her new Junior Researcher Group Artemics (Arctic internal wave energetics [...] Wegener Institute want to investigate how these waves work in the Arctic, how they are related to sea ice retreat and what this means for the future.

the Polarstern research vessel set sail from Bremerhaven for the Arctic. The destination of the 95 expedition participants, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, is the AWI Hausgarten, a long-term observatory [...] Greenland. There they will investigate how the ecosystems of the Arctic deep sea are reacting to changing environmental conditions as a result of rapid climate change. The month-long expedition, which is [...] plankton communities in the open water and physical changes in the ocean.

Press release

Press release

Press release

Press release

Press release