Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research


The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research is located in Bremerhaven, Germany, and a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. It conducts research in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the high and mid latitude oceans. Additional research topics are: North Sea research, marine biological monitoring, and technical marine developments. The institute was founded in 1980 and is named after meteorologist, climatologist, and geologist Alfred Wegener.

Research

The institute has three major departments:
The institute is distributed over several sites within North Germany and the Otto Schmidt Laboratory for Polar and Marine Research at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in Saint Petersburg as Russian-German cooperation in the field of Arctic research, named after the polar explorer Otto Schmidt.

Bremerhaven

The headquarters was founded by Gotthilf Hempel. Nowadays, the AWI has several buildings within the city of Bremerhaven.
The Forschungstelle Potsdam is situated on the Telegrafenberg next to Potsdam. It belongs to AWI since 1992. The research focuses on the atmospheric physics and atmospheric chemistry of the atmosphere on the one hand and periglacial research on the other hand.

Sylt

The Wadden Sea Station Sylt is located on the North German island Sylt.
It was founded in 1924 as an oyster laboratory to study the decline of oyster stocks and in order to study how they could be cultivated. In 1937, the name changed from oyster laboratory to Wadden Sea station. The station grew, and in 1949 the station was shifted from the northernmost edge of the island to the current location, next to the harbor of List. In 1998 the station became part of AWI. Nowadays, there are about 30 scientists and technicians. Two guest houses allow to perform workshops and video conferences are possible with the AWI headquarters.
The research focuses on coast ecology and coast geology. In the 1930 there have been oyster reefs below the mussel banks at the water level. Below these, there have been sabellaria reefs which have been destroyed by fishery. Nowadays there are only the mussel banks left.

Helgoland

The Biologische Anstalt Helgoland is situated at on the island Heligoland. The station exists since 1892. Scientists study the ecology of the North Sea in this research station.
Since 1962, at Heligoland roadstead, phytoplankton and water samples are taken every weekday morning,
the turbidity is measured and other parameters are recorded. The North Sea warmed by 1.65 °C since the start of the time series.

Stations

The institute maintains several research stations around the Arctic Ocean and on the Antarctic continent.

Neumayer Station

The Neumayer-Station III located at, about away from the previous station, Neumayer II which is now abandoned and covered by a thick ice cover. The new station is a futuristic-looking combined platform above the snow surface offering space for research, operations, and living since 2009. The station stands on 16 hydraulic posts which are used to adjust the building to the growing snow cover. Below the station :de:PistenBully|PistenBullys and other equipment are stored an underground garage.
In summer, the station can host up to 40 people. The station contains several laboratories, has a weather balloon launching facility, and a hospital with telemedical equipment.

Dallmann Laboratory

In cooperation with the Instituto Antártico Argentino, in 1994 the AWI opened a research station on King George Island at. The station is named after Eduard Dallmann, a German whaler, trader and Polar explorer living next to Bremen.

Koldewey Station

The Koldewey Station at is named after the German polar explorer Carl Koldewey and part of the French-German Arctic Research AWIPEV Arctic in Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard.

Kohnen Station

The Kohnen Station was established in 2001 as logistical base for ice core drilling in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica at

Samoylov Station

The Samoylov Station at lays within the Lena Delta close to the Laptev Sea. The station was set up as a logistic base for permafrost studies by the Lena Delta Reserve and the AWI.

Ships

Altogether there are six ships that belong to AWI.

RV ''Polarstern''

The AWI flagship is Germany's research icebreaker RV Polarstern. The ship was commissioned in 1982. The double-hulled icebreaker is operational up to temperatures as low as −50 °C. Polarstern can break through sea ice of 1.5 m thickness at a speed of 5 knots, thicker ice must be broken by ramming. A possible but not probable follow-up flagship might be the research icebreaker Aurora Borealis.

RV ''Heincke''

The vessel RV Heincke is a multifunctional and low-noise ship for research in ice-free waters, named after German zoologist and ichthyologist Friedrich Heincke. With a length of 54.6 m, a width of 12.5 m and a draft 4.16 m, the ship is categorized as "medium research vessel" within the German research fleet.
The ship was put into operation in 1990, its building costs have been around 16 Millionen Euro.
On the vessel, up to 12 scientists and 8 crew members can work for up to 30 passage days. This corresponds to an operating range of roughly 7500 nautical miles. The shipowner is Briese Schiffahrts GmbH & Co. KG from Leer, a city in East Frisia.

RV ''Uthörn''

The research cutter RV Uthörn is named after the small island Uthörn next to Sylt in the North Sea. The vessel is regularly on research tours in German Bight, but is also used to supply the AWI branch Biologische Anstalt Helgoland mentioned above. Two scientists and 4 crew members can live and work on board for up to 180 days, but the vessel mainly used for day trips. Another operation purpose are short term cruises of a few hours for up to 25 students to demonstrate oceanographic and biological sampling methods.
Being commissioned in 1982 RV Uthörn replaced a vessel with the same name which was built in 1947 and had a length of 24 m. The current vessel is powered by two V12
four-stroke Diesel engines manufactured by the company MWM GmbH from Mannheim. Each engine delivers up to 231 kW to a controllable-pitch propeller; the maximal speed is around 10 kn.
On the working deck, there is a dry lab and a laboratory for wet work like sorting fish. The ship is equipped with standard sampling devices: You may find on board a demersal trawl, a Van Veen Grab Sampler, Niskin bottles, and even deprecated reversing thermometers for teaching purposes.

''Mya'', ''Aade'' and ''Diker''

The research catamaran Mya is specially designed for research in the intertidal zone, it can fall dry at low tide. The main research area is the Wadden Sea. Last but not least, there are two small motor boats, Aade and Diker for sampling and diving operations around Heligoland.

Aircraft

Past aircraft

The Alfred Wegener Institute operated five airplanes under the name of Polar, those being:
AWI currently uses two Basler BT-67. These planes are 20 m long, 5.2 m high and have a wingspan of 29 m. The empty weight is 7680 kg, with ski landing gear it weighs 8340 kg.
The minimal cruising speed is 156 km/h, the maximum is SFA. Without payload, the flying range is around 3900 km. The planes are maintained by the company Kenn Borek Air located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Polar 5

The plane hull was built in 1942 but completely refurbished after the AWI acquired the plane in 2007. Since then it "has supplied a large volume of valuable data" said Prof. :de:Heinrich Miller|Heinrich Miller, the former director of the AWI.

Polar 6

This plane with the call sign C-FHGF was acquired by AWI in 2011. The BMBF, the German Federal Minister of Education and Research funded the purchase and equipping of the plane with a total of 9.78 million euros.

History

On 24 February 1985, the Polar 3, a research airplane of the institute of the type Dornier 228, was shot down by guerrillas of the Polisario Front over West Sahara. All three crew members died. Polar 3, together with unharmed Polar 2, was on its way back from Antarctica and had taken off in Dakar, Senegal, to reach Arrecife, Canary Islands.