• International Honour for Permafrost Research in Potsdam - The International Permafrost Association elects Prof. Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten as its New President

      Press release

    • Siberia’s permafrost erosion has been worsening for years

      Permafrost
      The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on the planet. As a result, permafrost that is thousands of years old is now being lost to erosion. As measurements gathered on the Lena [...] every year, roughly 15 metres of the riverbanks crumble away. In addition, the carbon stored in the permafrost could worsen the greenhouse effect.

    • Increased greenhouse-gas emissions due to abrupt permafrost thaw

      Permafrost
      The permafrost regions of the Arctic, often referred to as nature’s iceboxes, contain tremendous amounts of carbon, mainly in the form of animal and vegetable matter accumulated in frozen [...] considered in permafrost emission estimates so far. As they report in the journal Nature Geoscience, abrupt thaw processes, which are possible in ca. five percent of all Arctic permafrost landscapes, could

    • Retreating permafrost coasts threaten the fragile Arctic environment

      Permafrost
      Permafrost makes up a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere. Climate change means that Arctic coasts are thawing and eroding at an ever greater pace, releasing additional greenhouse

    • The pace at which the world’s permafrost soils are warming

      apparent scars in the world’s permafrost regions. As the new global comparative study conducted by the international permafrost network GTN-P shows, in all regions with permafrost soils the temperature of the

    • Why permafrost might thaw sooner than expected

      Permafrost
      Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) and the University of Oslo have determined that much [...] much of the permafrost that is currently still very cold might disappear by the end of the century. What’s new about their simulations: the inclusion of thermokarst processes. The outcomes of the study

    • Beavers gnawing away at the permafrost

      their new homes, creating a host of new water bodies. This could accelerate the thawing of the permafrost soils, and therefore intensify climate change, as an International American-German research team

    • Coastal carbon sinks protect permafrost material from decomposition

      Permafrost
      The Arctic is warming more strongly than any other region on Earth, which leads to serious erosion of coasts where organic matter was frozen in the permafrost for thousands of years. Once

    • Permafrost comics awarded

      AWI scientist Michael Fritz receives this year's Potsdam Prize for Science Communication for the project "Es taut!: Frozen Ground Cartoons". The comics were created in cooperation with artists.

    • Award for permafrost expert

      Prize for AWI scientist Ingmar Nitze: As part of this years Publication Award of the Leibniz Kolleg in Potsdam, the permafrost expert has been announced as a laureate. The yearly confered promotion supports young scientists of mathematics and natural sciences.