funded by JPI Oceans and will create new knowledge and improve our mechanistic understanding of the sources, transport, occurrence, and fate of small microplastics from European waters to the Arctic. The consortium

Arctic Ocean
The sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean reached its annual minimum of 4.81 million square kilometres on 12 September 2021. As such, the 2021 Arctic sea-ice minimum comes in at 12th place

Arctic Ocean
In the summer months, sea ice from the Arctic drifts through Fram Strait into the Atlantic. Thanks to meltwater, a stable layer forms around the drifting ice atop the more salty seawater [...] team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now determined with the aid of the FRAM ocean observation system. Their findings have just been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Arctic Ocean
The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic is influencing sea-ice transport across the Arctic Ocean. As experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research [...] percent of the sea ice that forms in the shallow Russian marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean actually reaches the Central Arctic, where it joins the Transpolar Drift; the remaining 80 percent of the young [...] development not only takes us one step closer to an ice-free summer in the Arctic; as the sea ice dwindles, the Arctic Ocean stands to lose an important means of transporting nutrients, algae and sediments

have now shown, the ocean may weaken warming around Antarctica and delay sea-ice retreat. Given that many models are not capable of accurately reflecting this factor and the role of ocean eddies, the study [...] Climate Research
Despite global warming and the sea-ice loss in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea-ice extent has remained largely unchanged since 1979. However, existing climate model-based simulations

Biodiversity
Massive sponge gardens thrive on top of seamounts in the Central Arctic Ocean, one of the most oligotrophic seas on Earth. They appear to feed on the remnants of an extinct fauna. Micr [...] Communications . They stress the need for a better understanding of the diversity and uniqueness of Arctic ecosystems in the light of global and local change.

frequency over a full annual cycle in the Central Arctic Ocean. They have now published three overview articles on the MOSAiC atmosphere, snow and sea ice, and ocean programs in the journal Elementa, highlighting [...] together. These results present the first complete picture of the climate processes in the central Arctic which is warming more than two times as fast as the rest of the planet - processes which affect weather

in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The results from Stockholm University, the Alfred Wegener Institute and colleagues in the European Fisheries Inventory in the Central Arctic Ocean (EFICA) Consortium are

of plastic has reached all spheres of the Arctic: large quantities of plastic - transported by rivers, the air and shipping- can now be found in the Arctic Ocean. High concentrations of microplastic can

, e.g. in water bodies, the soil and the air. Via ocean currents and rivers, the tiny plastic particles can even reach the Arctic, Antarctic or ocean depths. A new overview study has now shown that wind [...] the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel – describes how microplastic finds its way into the atmosphere and how it is subsequently