• The Arctic is facing a decline in sea ice that might equal the negative record of 2012

    Arctic sea ice
    Sea ice physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), are anticipating that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean this summer may [...] after evaluating current satellite data about the thickness of the ice cover. The data show that the arctic sea ice was already extraordinarily thin in the summer of 2015. Comparably little new ice formed

  • 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

  • Oceanic microseisms

    layers of the ground, oceanic microseisms can spread over many hundreds of kilometres. It is now well researched how strong storms not only generate large waves, but also increased oceanic microseisms activity [...] other way round: what does oceanic microseisms tell us about the nature of the ice over the course of the seasons? To answer these questions, we use data from our ice-going ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS) [...] microseismics were also recorded, which we are currently analysing. Map of the Arctic and Antarctic. The red stars mark the oceanic microseisms research projects. (Graphic: Alfred-Wegener-Institut) Contact

  • Oasis of life in the ice-covered central Arctic

    the ice of the Arctic, unknown habitats conceal an unexpected variety of living beings. On October 23rd, 46 scientists are expected to return to the home port in Bremerhaven from an Arctic expedition with [...] with the research vessel Polarstern. Over the past six weeks, they had explored life in ice, ocean and seabed with new robots and camera systems.

  • PPR_Arctic

    remote sensing data alone, as the satellite ocean color algorithms are known to perform poorly at polar latitudes even if developed explicitly for the Arctic waters. Gaps in satellite data, which occur [...] for satellite applications. Ocean Science, 9 (2), pp. 431-445. doi: 10.5194/os-9-431-2013 , hdl:10013/epic.41331 Other references: Antoine, D. and A. Morel (1996). Oceanic primary production: I. Adaptation [...] PhD Thesis Alexandra Cherkasheva 2009-2014 Arctic phytoplankton today deserve special attention as they are already living in waters with most prominent climate change effect, which are shifting towards

  • Long-term Observations

    Long-term observations in the Arctic and Southern Ocean Arctic Ocean The Arctic is an environment where global climate change is strongly manifested. The Arctic Amplification, represented by the atmospheric [...] atmospheric warming trend in the Arctic being about three times that of the global average, is also manifested in sea-ice and… Find out more Southern Ocean The oceans are key elements of the global climate [...] system, not at last due to their ability to extract and store heat and CO2 from the atmosphere. Polar oceans are of particular Find out more

  • Ocean biogeochemical modelling

    develops, runs and analyses global ocean biogeochemistry models, with a special interest in the polar regions. A special focus is on feedbacks between climate change and the ocean carbon cycle. The group hosts [...] (see Research ). We contribute to and coordinate the ocean carbon sink estimate in the Global Carbon Budget , particularly the ensemble of Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Models that includes FESOM-REcoM." [...] feedbacks in the carbon cycle and in the marine ecosystem, with a special interest in the Arctic and the Southern Oceans. Surface chloropyll a concentration in an eddy-resolving simulation (1 km horizontal

  • Arctic Carbon Conveyor Belt Discovered

    million metric tons of CO 2 in the Arctic deep sea for millennia. In this region alone, a previously unknown transport route uses the biological carbon pump and ocean currents to absorb atmospheric CO 2

  • Arctic_en

    study of Arctic Ocean surface sediments (Fig. 2; Xiao et al., 2015 ). During the last years, a large number of IP 25 /PIP 25 studies have been carried out to reconstruct the late Quaternary Arctic sea-ice [...] Polar sea ice variability - Arctic Our ability to quantitatively reconstruct Arctic paleo-sea-ice distributions has been greatly improved by a novel biomarker approach which is based on the determination [...] SeaIce4). In order to fully establish the IP 25 approach as key proxy for the reconstruction of past Arctic Ocean sea-ice conditions, however, more ground-truth data related to the synthesis, diagenesis, and

  • The Transpolar Drift is faltering – and sea ice is now melting before it can leave the nursery

    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