16 August 2018
It may come as a surprise, but due to this year’s ice conditions, the Swedish icebreaker Oden had serious difficulties penetrating to the North Pole. The Oden first hit the edge of the ice at 82 °N. “We’re very curious to see how the dense ice in the region has affected the ice thickness and the algae livening in the ice,” reports Christian Katlein from on board the icebreaker. More here…

7th August 2018
The maximum sea-ice extent around the Antarctic continent has by no means already been reached. Nevertheless, over the past few months the area of sea ice has grown by an average of 0.1 million km² per day, a higher rate than has been observed in the past several years. Read more about the actual Antarctic sea ice situation here...

27th. July 2018
Can we already provide reliable forecasts for the navigability of the Northern Sea Routes on a timeframe of several months, to enable shipping with the lowest possible risk? These and other questions are being explored by the sea-ice modelling group at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). Read more here...

22 June 2018
CryoSat-2, a radar altimeter satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), had its eighth birthday on April 8, 2018. Observations from CryoSat-2 add vital information on sea ice thickness to other satellite observations, such as sea ice concentration, drift and extent. Read more here about latest results from the these measurements here...