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Higher Water Temperatures and Reduced Ice Cover In the Arctic Ocean

Press release

The sea-ice is getting thinner – A closer look at the climate and ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean

Press release

JAGO and Polarstern, an unbeatable team on a coldwater coral expedition in Arctic ocean

Press release

Fire under the ice - International expedition discovers gigantic volcanic eruption in the Arctic Ocean

Press release

Continued warming of the Arctic Ocean - Northernmost position of the new research vessel Maria S Merian

Press release

How climate change is altering the Arctic Ocean

On 29 May 2025, 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 [...] y situated between Svalbard and 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 [...] June, will focus on benthic and plankton communities in the open water and physical changes in the ocean.

How waves stir up the Arctic Ocean - new Emmy Noether Group at the AWI

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 [...] mixed. Oceanographer Dr Friederike Pollmann and her new Junior Researcher Group Artemics (Arctic internal wave energetics and mixing and their interdependence with sea ice in changing climate conditions) [...] conditions) at the Alfred 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 gypsum gravity chute: A phytoplankton-elevator to the ocean floor

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.

Great potential for comprehensive monitoring of the water masses in the ocean

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

Litter Levels in the Depths of the Arctic are On the Rise

Arctic Ocean
The Arctic has a serious litter problem: in just ten years, the concentration of marine litter at a deep-sea station in the Arctic Ocean has risen 20-fold. This was recently reported in

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