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. Microorganisms support [...] for a better understanding of the diversity and uniqueness of Arctic ecosystems in the light of global and local change.

Climate Change
The warming of arctic waters in the wake of climate change is likely to produce radical changes in the marine habitats of the High North. This is indicated [...] important finding: even a short-term influx of warm water into the Arctic Ocean would suffice to fundamentally impact the local symbiotic communities, from the water’s surface down to the deep seas. As the

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 research

MOSAiC Expedition
It could be the largest-scale Arctic research expedition of all time: in September 2019 the German research icebreaker Polarstern will depart from Tromsø, Norway and, [...] its destination, will spend the next year drifting through the Arctic Ocean, trapped in the ice. A total of 600 people from 17 countries, who will be supplied by other icebreakers and aircraft, will

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 shrink to the record low of 2012. The scientists made this projection 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 during the past winter. Today Dr

Svalbard to conduct their 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 [...] 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 than in the past two decades, and how the unseasonably high summer temperatures affected Arctic ice cover.

Oceanic microseisms - formation, propagation and interaction with sea ice When waves break on the high seas or on the beach, they create [...] ice-going ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS) . These were deployed in ice-covered areas to investigate, for example, submarine volcanism and the [...] 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 An ice-going

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 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 [...] to extract and store heat and CO2 from the atmosphere. Polar oceans are of particular Find out more

Polarstern Expedition
Under 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 the research vessel Polarstern. Over the past six weeks, they had explored life in ice, ocean and seabed with new

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 [...] recommended to use 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 [...] Oceanic primary production: I. Adaptation of a spectral light-photosynthesis model in view of application to satellite chlorophyll observations