11 July 2019
The Arctic is home to several types of sea ice, which differ in their physical characteristics (e.g. ice thickness, salt content, malleability). Accordingly, being familiar with the different types of sea ice is important for a range of activities. Dr Christian Melsheimer, a physicist at the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics, was involved in the development and implementation of an algorithm for determining ice types: “Since the 1980s the amount of multiyear ice in the Arctic has virtually been cut in half, and the majority of the loss took place in the past twelve years. It goes without saying that we need to keep a close eye on parameters that change rapidly, and to observe them at regular intervals.” Read more here...

22 May 2019
With the return of the Russian research icebreaker “Akademik Treshnikov” to the port of Murmansk, Russia, another successful chapter in Russian-German collaborative Arctic research drew to a close. Read more here...

4 May 2019
“Since the end of March, we’ve been seeing new negative record values on a daily basis,” says Dr Lars Kaleschke, a sea-ice physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, assessing the current situation in the Arctic. “The further progression of the sea-ice retreat and the ice conditions next summer will also be very exciting for us in connection with the launch of the MOSAiC expedition, which will take our research icebreaker Polarstern to the Central Arctic for an entire year, starting in mid-September.” Read more here...

12 April 2019
The amount of thicker multiyear ice has been strongly decreasing during the last decades, but the winter sea ice maximum only little. Thus, today the area of thinner first-year ice makes up a considerably larger part of the sea ice covered region. Daily observations of the ice cover and its thickness are important to track these rapid changes and improve our understanding of the Arctic climate system. Read more here...

2 April 2019
New AWI sea-ice study reveals the extreme scale of sea-ice melting in the Arctic. 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 report in a new study, today only 20 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 ice melts before it has a chance to leave its ‘nursery’. Before 2000, that number was only 50 percent. Find out more...

12 March 2019
The Bering Sea showed the most dramatic development this month. Normally the amount of sea ice in the Bering Sea continues to grow until late April / early May; the ice is unstable and reacts to the effects of wind and waves. According to Dr Monica Ionita-Scholz, a climatologist at the AWI: “It’s an impressive and very rare situation that we’re currently witnessing in the Bering Sea. Although “atmospheric rivers” do reach the Bering Strait in some cases, it is extremely rare, possibly even unprecedented, to see three consecutive episodes of warm intrusions over this region in less than 10 days.” Find out more…

26 February 2019
Since being launched in 2013, the information and data portal meereisportal.de has provided, for the first time, a central German-language source of scientific findings on the topic of sea ice for all levels of society and in various levels of detail. meereisportal.de is a knowledge transfer project jointly created by the research network REKLIM, the AWI and its Climate Office, and the University of Bremen (IUP). But who’s actually at work behind the scenes at meereisportal.de? Read on to find out…

12 February 2019
Snow on Arctic sea ice plays an important role in the Arctic climate system. It reflects the majority of the incoming solar radiation and isolates the sea ice from warm air in summer and therefore slows down its melting. In addition, information about snow depth is needed for sea ice thickness retrievals based on satellite altimetry. Read more here...

30 January 2019
If we review the sea-ice extent in the Antarctic over the past few weeks, we can see an exciting trend – and not just in our potential interpretations, but also when we compare the current situation to sea-ice conditions in previous years. Chief Scientist Dr Olaf Boebel from RV Polarstern expedition reports: “This year we’ve actually had difficulties finding suitable ice floes where we could conduct the planned marine biology experiments. But in terms of our plotted course and staying on the Polarstern’s schedule, the conditions are of course excellent.” Read more here…