Press release

Southern Ocean
A unique series of measurements taken over several years in the Antarctic Ocean provide new findings about the daily vertical migration of zooplankton communities: scientists of the Thünen [...] Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries in Hamburg and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven observed changes during the year and between years. The Antarctic zooplankton is the main source of food for many [...] many fish and whale species, including the largest mammal in the world, the blue whale.

little about the early phases of the circulation. This will be the focus of future studies, e.g. the BMBF project SLIP . Drilling the younger history of water mass exchange! The younger history of the water [...] documented e.g. in the western part of Ireland and the UK where branches of the gulf stream, named after the Gulf of Mexico, lead to a mild climate and allow the growth of palm trees. In the same latitudes [...] with the establishment of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet interrupted deposition of drift body 3. Deposition started again with the onset of the Pliocene (drift body 4, ~5 Ma). The gentle slope of the Outer

filmed thousands of nests of icefish of the species Neopagetopsis ionah on the seabed. The density of the nests and the size of the entire breeding area suggest a total number of about 60 million icefish [...] breeding at the time of observation. These findings provide support for the establishment of a Marine Protected Area in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. A team led by Autun Purser from the Alfred [...] Fascinating discovery
Near the Filchner Ice Shelf in the south of the Antarctic Weddell Sea, a research team has found the world's largest fish breeding area known to date. A towed camera system ph

landmass, sending up to 150 times the flow of all the world’s rivers clockwise around the frozen continent. It connects all the other oceans, and is thought to play a key role in regulating natural climate swings [...] Southern Ocean
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the planet’s most powerful and arguably most important. It is the only one to flow clear around the globe without getting diverted by any landmass [...] swings that have repeatedly swept the earth for millions of years. But much is still not known about how it works, including how it might now respond to human-induced climate change.

little about the life of the world’s second-largest whale. That makes the findings of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Johann [...] Antarctic Peninsula
During the era of commercial whaling, fin whales were hunted so intensively that only a small percentage of the population in the Southern Hemisphere survived, and even today, marine [...] where in the peak month of May, so many fin whale vocalizations can be heard that the individual calls merge into a veritable chorous of sound, as the research team now reports in the journal Royal Society

different types of killer whales live in the Southern Ocean. They are known to differ in feeding ecology and appearance. However, little is known about the distribution and behaviour of these different [...] whale ecotypes. To answer these questions, scientists monitor the whales’ communication with specific underwater sound recorders. However, so far nobody knew, which calls the different ecotypes are using

of the world’s stocks of seals. These large, abundant predators serve as powerful indicators of ecosystems and climate-driven change. The region of the Filchner Outflow System in the southern Weddell Sea [...] research at the Filchner Outflow System (Antarctica) Weddell seal with satellite transmitter (Photo: Horst Bornemann (AWI)) The Southern Ocean (SO) represents ~10% of the world’s oceans but hosts about 50% of [...] to comprehensively investigate the Filchner Outflow System (FOS). Here the outflow of ice shelf water of the Filchner Ronne Ice Shelf interacts with warm deep water of the Weddell Gyre circulation. This

societies around the world. Changes in the Southern Ocean may also impact the climate of other regions via atmospheric teleconnections. Antarctic climate variability arises as result of the tightly-coupled [...] ice covers much of the Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea ice plays an important role in strong feedback loops with the ocean and atmosphere. From the beginning of the satellite era in the late 1970s, Antarctic [...] for a large majority of global ocean heat and carbon uptake. Encircling the Antarctic continent, the Southern Ocean drives melt of the Antarctic ice sheet, which contains 60 m of potential global sea level

include a digital twin of every atom in the ocean and atmosphere in the model – and the processing power of all the world’s supercomputers combined wouldn’t remotely be up to the task. Accordingly, models [...] refers to the long-term state of the atmosphere and ocean over decades, centuries or millennia. To gauge the climate, the statistics of the meteorological parameters also used to determine the weather are [...] Celsius, according to the IPCC the risk of exceeding certain tipping points in the climate system will be lower. This assessment was also the basis for the 1.5-degree target included in the Paris Agreement,