Exploring the climate of the Arctic.

The Arctic is a key area of climate change. Hardly any other region in the world has so far warmed by so much; already in the course of the 21st century, the Arctic Ocean could become completely ice-free in summers.

Such a change has implications for the entire climate. However, the models that depict the future of the Arctic are still subject to large uncertainties, as many processes are not yet sufficiently understood. In particular, there is a lack of winter and spring data that could improve our understanding of Arctic climate processes. During these seasons, dense sea ice and darkness make research difficult, sometimes even nearly impossible.

With our research in the northern polar regions, we want to close these gaps in our knowledge. An important milestone for this was the MOSAiC expedition, in which the research icebreaker Polarstern drifted through the Arctic Ocean for a year.

Under the direction of the Alfred Wegener Institute, scientists from 20 nations researched the annual course of the Arctic, one of the largest unexplored areas in climate research. The data collected are valuable for a whole generation of polar researchers that are already helping us to understand the Arctic better.

(Photo: AWI/Esther Horvath)