• 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

    • Little researched current impacting on winter sea ice in the Arctic

      is thought to be the warming of Atlantic water that flows from Europe’s Norwegian Sea into the Arctic Ocean, passing through the Barents Sea and the Fram Strait in the process. However, not all the Atlantic [...] In the last few decades, the Arctic sea ice has receded ever further, including increasingly in winter when the extent of sea ice is at its most prominent. One of the main drivers of this development is

    • Low sea-ice cover in the Arctic

      Arctic Sea Ice
      The sea-ice extent in the Arctic is nearing its annual minimum at the end of the melt season in September. Only circa 3.9 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean are covered by

    • Lowest levels on record for Arctic winter sea ice

      The winter growth period for sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is now over, with levels at a record low. The winter ice extent on 21 March 2025 was lower than at any time since continuous satellite recording [...] cover is over a million square kilometres below the long-term average. As in February 2025, average Arctic sea ice cover remained at an all-time low for the entire month of March, equalling the previous low

    • M.Sc. Yeon Choi

      yeon.choi@awi.de
      Klußmannstraße 3d, 27570 Bremerhaven

    • MOSAiC Expedition

      habitat under the snow and ice cover of the Arctic Ocean. The results of the study now published in the New dataset reveals biological “treasure trove” of Arctic Ocean A major new project will help benchmark [...] 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 [...] An entire year trapped in the Arctic ice MOSAiC - Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate It is the largest-scale Arctic research expedition of all time: From autumn 2019

    • MOSAiC aerial campaign: first aerial survey flights in the Arctic since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic

      first aerial survey flights over the Arctic this year. The flights, which will extend far into the Central Arctic, will support the investigation of the atmosphere and sea ice, and supplement the MOSAiC [...] expedition’s extensive research agenda. Core research priorities include cloud formation over the Arctic Ocean and the question as to whether the sea ice observed during MOSAiC was generally thicker or thinner [...] Arctic
      Following a five-month mandatory delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, on August 30th the two German polar research aircraft Polar 5 and Polar 6 will launch from Svalbard to conduct their first

    • MOSAiC expedition: one year in the Arctic Ocean

    • Making the Arctic accessible for excellent science

      forces to improve the capacities for marine-based research in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean. In the project “ARICE- Arctic Research Icebreaker Consortium”, they aim at better coordinating the existing polar

    • Meltwater influences ecosystems in the Arctic Ocean

      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.