Image of the Month: December 2021

The Arctic is warming around two to three times faster than the rest of our planet. It is therefore important to understand what is happening there and what effects the changes there have on a global scale. In 2018, researchers from GEOMAR and AWI studied for the first time the seasonal development of the carbon dissolved in the water available to marine microorganisms in the region west of Spitsbergen. According to their results, there are significant differences between summer and autumn. This is one of the first studies ever to look at seasonal variations for the Arctic region west of Spitsbergen. The team used two expeditions in 2018 to do this: In July, the research vessel POLARSTERN took the normal, annual samples for the time series. In autumn, during a second expedition with the MARIA S. MERIAN from September to October, further samples were obtained and compared with those from the summer.

Photo: Anabel von Jackowski / GEOMAR

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