https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Alfred Wegener Institute A 93-strong international expedition team has been exploring the northwestern Weddell Sea in the Antarctic on board the Alfred Wegener Institute's icebreaker Polarstern since February 8, 2026. In this key region for global ocean currents, the focus has been on the outflow of ice and water from the Larsen Ice Shelf and the astonishing sea ice retreat of recent years. When the research work had to be interrupted due to rough weather conditions in order to seek shelter in the lee of Joinville Island, the scientists and ship's crew were surprised by the sudden appearance of an island that had previously only been marked as a danger zone on the available nautical charts. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-uncharted-island-nautical.html Earth Sciences Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:50:02 EDT news694886401 It transports far more than 100 times as much water as all of the Earth's rivers combined: The Antarctic Circumpolar Current rushes around the southern continent unhindered by land masses and is therefore a fundamental component of the climate system. In a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute describes how and when this mighty ring current developed in Earth's history. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-earth-powerful-ocean-current-revealed.html Earth Sciences Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:00:01 EDT news694429381 Antarctica plays a crucial role in Earth's climate system by reflecting solar radiation back into space. The large white ice surfaces and clouds play a decisive role in this process. However, how clouds actually form in Antarctica, how they interact with the atmosphere and what role aerosols play in this process has not been sufficiently researched to date. Engaging in the SANAT flight campaign, the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry aim to help close this knowledge gap. The flight-based aerosol measurements conducted in Antarctica are the first of their kind in 20 years and also the first to extend deep into the interior. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-clouds-antarctica-flight-based-aerosol.html Earth Sciences Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:10:02 EST news690803542 With the departure of the research vessel Polarstern from Punta Arenas (Chile) scheduled for this weekend, the "Summer Weddell Sea Outflow Study" (SWOS) international expedition will commence. Up to early April, a multidisciplinary international research team will investigate the northwestern region of the Weddell Sea—an area of central importance for the global climate and ocean system, but one that can only be explored on site by research icebreakers such as Polarstern due to challenging sea ice conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-polarstern-weddell-sea-probe-antarctica.html Earth Sciences Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:00:01 EST news689607734 "The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5°C in the next few years," UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently admitted ahead of the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-15c-obituary.html Earth Sciences Thu, 13 Nov 2025 06:52:04 EST news682239122 Climate models suggest that climate change could reduce the Southern Ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2). However, observational data actually shows that this ability has seen no significant decline in recent decades. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-southern-ocean-salinity-antarctic-absorbing.html Earth Sciences Fri, 17 Oct 2025 13:34:09 EDT news679926842 The Polarstern recently ended a two-month expedition in the central Arctic in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The international and interdisciplinary research team, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, focused on the summer melting of Arctic sea ice in three different regimes. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-unique-concept-arctic-sea-ice.html Earth Sciences Tue, 09 Sep 2025 14:20:02 EDT news676645974 Some 14,000 years ago, algal blooms in the Southern Ocean helped to massively reduce the global carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere—as has now been revealed by new analyses of ancient DNA published by a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in the journal Nature Geoscience. In the ocean around the Antarctic continent, these algal blooms had a significant impact on global carbon dynamics. The current and expected future decline in sea ice in this region now poses a serious threat to these algae, which could incur global consequences. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-microalgae-significant-co8322-absorption-southern.html Earth Sciences Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:56:04 EDT news675694561 In the last few decades, 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 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. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-understudied-current-barents-sea-play.html Earth Sciences Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:59:04 EDT news669895141 Antarctic krill is a key species in the Antarctic marine ecosystem as an important food source for many species, such as whales, seals and penguins. However, the small crustaceans are increasingly targeted as part of a growing fishing industry, which has significant consequences for the entire Southern Ocean ecosystem. Therefore, ways to minimize the negative effects of fishing on the krill themselves and on the animals that feed on them are urgently needed. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-acoustic-reveal-fishing-vessels-whales.html Ecology Tue, 17 Jun 2025 10:03:58 EDT news669373430 Temperatures around the world continue to rise—and the North Sea is no exception. Yet, in addition to this gradual warming, increasingly frequent and intense heat events also have consequences for marine organisms. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-marine-pose-problems-coastal-plankton.html Ecology Fri, 23 May 2025 09:47:05 EDT news667212421 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 began in 1979. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-lowest-arctic-winter-sea-ice.html Earth Sciences Mon, 07 Apr 2025 13:09:58 EDT news663250186 In the Arctic, the old, multi-year ice is increasingly melting, dramatically reducing the frequency and size of pressure ridges. These ridges are created when ice floes press against each other and become stacked, and are a characteristic feature of Arctic sea ice, an obstacle for shipping, but also an essential component of the ecosystem. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-aerial-survey-analysis-reveals-major.html Earth Sciences Mon, 06 Jan 2025 09:52:06 EST news655379521 2023 set a number of alarming new records. The global mean temperature also rose to nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, another record. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-rapid-surge-global-due-planetary.html Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Dec 2024 14:00:02 EST news652618338 Only a few weeks ago, massive precipitation produced by the storm "Boris" led to chaos and flooding in Central and Eastern Europe. An analysis conducted by the Alfred Wegener Institute shows that in a world without the current level of global warming, Boris would have deposited roughly 9% less rain. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-storyline-simulations-gauge-role-global.html Earth Sciences Fri, 08 Nov 2024 10:36:05 EST news650284561 Sparse sea ice, thousands of data points and samples, a surprising number of animals and hydrothermal vents—those are the impressions and outcomes that an international research team is now bringing back from a Polarstern expedition to the Central Arctic. After a four-month-long Arctic season, the Alfred Wegener Institute's research icebreaker is expected to arrive back in Bremerhaven with the morning high tide on Sunday. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-vessel-comprehensive-central-arctic-ocean.html Environment Fri, 11 Oct 2024 13:53:04 EDT news647873581 The global production of plastics and the resulting plastic waste has increased to such an extent that plastics have become ubiquitous in our environment. Plastics of various sizes are also found along the German North Sea and Baltic coasts. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-citizen-scientists-microplastics-entire-german.html Environment Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:24:04 EDT news646496641 Northeast Greenland is home to the 79° N Glacier—the country's largest floating glacier tongue, but also one seriously threatened by global warming. Warm water from the Atlantic is melting it from below. However, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now determined that the temperature of the water flowing into the glacier cavern declined from 2018 to 2021, even though the ocean has steadily warmed in the region over the past several decades. This could be due to temporarily changed atmospheric circulation patterns. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-atmospheric-blocking-ocean-driven-greenland.html Earth Sciences Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:20:38 EDT news646406426 Photosynthesis can take place in nature even at extremely low light levels. This is the result of an international study that investigated the development of Arctic microalgae at the end of the polar night. The measurements were carried out as part of the MOSAiC expedition at 88° northern latitude and revealed that even this far north, microalgae can build up biomass through photosynthesis as early as the end of March. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-arctic-microalgae-photosynthesis-darkness.html Ecology Wed, 04 Sep 2024 09:53:03 EDT news644662381 In recent years, global warming has left its mark on the Antarctic ice sheets. The "eternal" ice in Antarctica is melting faster than previously assumed, particularly in West Antarctica more than East Antarctica. The root for this could lie in its formation, as an international research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now discovered. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-recovery-unique-geological-samples-formation.html Earth Sciences Thu, 04 Jul 2024 14:00:01 EDT news639237721 Permafrost soils store large quantities of organic carbon and are often portrayed as a critical tipping element in the Earth system, which, once global warming has reached a certain level, suddenly and globally collapses. Yet this image of a ticking timebomb, one that remains relatively quiet until, at a certain level of warming, it goes off, is a controversial one among the research community. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-permafrost-climate-impacts.html Earth Sciences Mon, 03 Jun 2024 05:00:01 EDT news636365384 The basis of the marine food web in the Arctic, the phytoplankton, responds to heat waves much differently than to constantly elevated temperatures. This has been found by the first targeted experiments on the topic, which were recently conducted at the Alfred Wegener Institute's AWIPEV Station. The phytoplankton's behavior primarily depends on the cooling phases after or between heat waves, as shown in a study just released in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-affecting-arctic-phytoplankton.html Ecology Fri, 17 May 2024 14:00:01 EDT news635169126 Sport junkie or couch potato? Always on time or often late? The animal kingdom, too, is home to a range of personalities, each with its own lifestyle. In a study just released in the journal PLOS Biology, a team led by Sören Häfker and Kristin Tessmar-Raible from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the University of Vienna reports on a surprising discovery: Even simple marine polychaete worms shape their day-to-day lives on the basis of highly individual rhythms. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-worms-alike-simplest-marine-tend.html Ecology Thu, 11 Apr 2024 14:48:03 EDT news632065681 Up to now, the results of climate simulations have sometimes contradicted the analysis of climate traces from the past. A team led by the physicist Thomas Laepple from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam and the climatologist Kira Rehfeld from the University of Tübingen has therefore brought together experts in climate models and climate tracks to clarify how the discrepancies come about. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-scientists-highlight-discrepancies-regional-climate.html Earth Sciences Mon, 06 Nov 2023 11:00:01 EST news618485800 Due to intensifying sea-ice melting in the Arctic, sunlight is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the ocean. Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behavior—especially how the tiny organisms rise and fall within the water column. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-due-sea-ice-retreat-zooplankton-deep.html Plants & Animals Mon, 28 Aug 2023 11:00:02 EDT news612432312 The alga Melosira arctica, which grows under Arctic sea ice, contains ten times as many microplastic particles as the surrounding seawater. This concentration at the base of the food web poses a threat to creatures that feed on the algae at the sea surface. Clumps of dead algae also transport the plastic with its pollutants particularly quickly into the deep sea—and can thus explain the high microplastic concentrations in the sediment there. Researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have now reported this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-arctic-ice-algae-heavily-contaminated.html Plants & Animals Fri, 21 Apr 2023 06:00:01 EDT news601225079 Human beings have massively changed the Earth system. Greenhouse-gas emissions produced by human activities have caused the global mean temperature to rise by more than 1.1°C compared to the preindustrial era. And every year, there are additional emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, currently amounting to more than 55 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-climate-crisis-biodiversity-approached.html Environment Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:00:07 EDT news601213909 Many of us picture the Arctic as largely untouched wilderness. But that has long-since ceased to be true for all of the continent. It is also home to oilfields and pipelines, mines and various other industrial activities. The corresponding facilities were built on a foundation once considered to be particularly stable and reliable: permafrost. This unique type of soil, which can be found in large expanses of the Northern Hemisphere, only thaws at the surface in summer. The remainder, extending up to hundreds of meters down, remains frozen year-round. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-history-industrial-contamination-arctic-permafrost.html Earth Sciences Tue, 04 Apr 2023 10:31:05 EDT news599823062 There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometers of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen analyze the situation for the Sea Ice Portal. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-sea-ice-antarctic.html Earth Sciences Fri, 10 Feb 2023 14:27:06 EST news595261623 "Citizen Science" gives interested citizens the chance to actively engage in scientific research. A citizen-science project conducted by AWI in the Arctic now shows just how successful this can be. In the course of five years, citizens who went on sailing cruises to the Arctic surveyed and collected plastic debris that had washed up on the shores of Svalbard. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-plastic-debris-arctic-world.html Earth Sciences Tue, 07 Feb 2023 02:00:02 EST news594911658