Current issues

Over many decades lead (Pb) has been released into the atmosphere due to human activities, such as combustion of leaded fuel. A group of researchers led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have now been able to show that following the ...

Gas hydrates are ice-like compounds of water molecules with gases such as methane. They occur in large quantities in the continental slopes of ocean margins. Due to the enclosed methane, they are considered a potential source of energy. Funded by the ...

Researchers from the Universities of Bremen and Innsbruck show in a recent study that the further melting of glaciers cannot be prevented in the current century - even if all emissions were stopped now. However, due to the slow reaction of glaciers to ...

Stro­matolites are among the old­est fossils with 3.5 bil­lion years. Up to now, however, lime de­pos­its have only oc­curred in shal­low seas with wa­ter depths of up to ten meters. The lime lay­ers can only grow if mi­croor­gan­isms that ...

In a seven-year laboratory study, Dr. Christian Knoblauch from Universität Hamburg's Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) and an international team have shown, for the first time, that significantly more methane is produced by ...

On the seafloor of the shallow coastal regions north of Siberia, microorganisms produce methane when they break down plant remains. If this greenhouse gas finds its way into the water, it can also become trapped in the sea ice that forms in these coastal ...

The world's second-largest ice shelf was the destination for a POLARSTERN expedition that ended in Punta Arenas, Chile on 14th March 2018. Oceanographers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, together with German and international colleagues, have collected ...

In winter, cold water masses in the North Atlantic sink from the sea surface into the deep ocean. This process, known as convection, is one of the key components of the large-scale ocean circulation. Based on long-term observations, scientists from the ...

On 15 March, the AWI research aeroplane Polar 5 will depart for Greenland. Concentrating on the furthest northeast region of the island, an international team of researchers will spend the next four weeks studying how the Arctic is changing. In the ...

The Paris climate agreement obliges the international community to limit global warming to two degrees. However, man-made greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase instead of decreasing. Is climate engineering a solution to slow global warming? In ...

Many small and mid-sized enterprise (SMEs) in rural areas would like to strengthen their social and environmental activities - but are often prevented by staffing and financial constraints. A new directory provides them with a catalogue of measures they ...

In addition to manganese nodules in abyssal plains, ore deposits around hot vents on the seabed are among the potentially economically interesting metal deposits in the oceans. This week, members of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) met in London ...

Dark clouds of smoke - released by underwater volcanoes located in water depths between 700 and 1800 meters below the surface - rise from the seabed. What exactly these clouds contain and how far their constituents are spread throughout the ocean is the ...

The Alps were formed about 130 million years ago by the collision of the Eurasian and the African tectonic plates. Strong tectonic forces are still active in the earth's crust. But what exactly happens when two tectonic plates collide? The large-scale ...

Which mechanisms control the exchange of climate-relevant gases between the ocean and the atmosphere? How does biology influence this exchange? In the next three weeks, a research team from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel will address ...