Prof. Dr. Peter Braesicke

is an atmospheric research scientist at the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research – Atmospheric Trace Gases and Remote Sensing (IMK-ASF) which is part of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He heads the modelling group at IMK-ASF and in his numerous studies addresses the detailed interactions between atmospheric composition and the climate. He is a member of the lead author team of the current Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2018 and heads the Helmholtz-Climate-Initiative Regional Climate Change (REKLIM) as its scientific coordinator. REKLIM is a consortium of nine research centres within the Helmholtz Association that engage in joint transdisciplinary research on the regional impacts of climate change. > web

Dr. Harald Elsner

is a research geologist and expert on mineral raw materials at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover. He observes the global markets for raw materials and in his studies regularly addresses the questions as to which raw materials are in demand, the size of their existing reserves, and the degree to which these deposits could in future be exploited, if at all. In particular, he focuses on rare earths, i.e. “high-tech” metals that will be needed for future technologies, on heavy minerals, and also on the mass raw material sand. > web

Dr. Klaus Grosfeld

is a research geophysicist at the Climate ­Sciences Division of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz ­Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. His research focus is on mass balances of the polar ice sheets and their contribution to global sea-level rise. Moreover, he is Managing Director of the Helmholtz-Climate-Initiative Regional Climate Change (REKLIM) and heads the Knowledge Transfer Research Unit at the Alfred Wegener Institute. At this research unit, Klaus Grosfeld and his colleagues develop ideas for new formats, products and measures designed to inform the wider public as well as decision-makers in the business world, the policy sphere and ­society at large on important developments in the polar regions and to provide advice. > web

Prof. Dr. Julian Gutt

is a marine ecologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. He studies benthic communities of the Southern Ocean in terms of their diversity, ecosystem functions and vulnerability to environmental change. To this end, he primarily uses imaging methods as they spare the ecosystem from damage and depict the benthic communities in their natural state. He has conducted these investigations in the course of numerous expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, twice as chief scientist on board of the German research icebreaker Polarstern. Julian Gutt contributes his polar expertise and many years of experience to numerous international organizations, such as the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the policy-advising Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). > web

Dr. Stefan Hain

heads the Environmental Policy Staff Unit at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. Among other roles as part of this function, he is the institute’s contact person for the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Germany’s regulatory body for all activities within the remit of the Antarctic Treaty. The marine biologist completed his doctorate at the AWI and then worked at the interface of science and policy for more than 25 years. One of his positions was as Head of the Coral Reef Unit of the United Nations Environment Programme in Cambridge, UK. In 2009 he returned to the AWI and since then he has been working as the institute’s environmental policy spokesperson, coordinating AWI’s contributions to a variety of international processes which could potentially impact on the institute’s research activities, especially those in the Antarctic. He invests a particularly great amount of time and energy in the German-European project to establish a Marine Protected Area in the Weddell Sea. The application for the designa­tion was prepared by the AWI. However, the relevant negotiations at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) are difficult and protracted. > web

Dr. Hartmut H. Hellmer

works as a physical oceanographer at the Physical Oceanography of Polar Seas Section of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. His focus is on the interactions between the polar marginal seas and the ice shelves, i.e. the ­floating extensions of the Antarctic ice sheet. His investigations resulted in the mathematical formulation and numerical implementation of thermohaline exchange processes at the ocean/ice-shelf interface, as well as BRIOS, the first coupled ice-ocean model for the southern hemisphere. The simulations using this model have shown that the expected warming in the Antarctic may result in changes in the southern Weddell Sea circulation, which transports warm water masses into the cavities of adjacent ice shelves. The associated increase in basal melting can reduce the buttressing effect of an ice shelf and result in the accelerated loss of inland ice which in turn would contribute to sea-level rise. > web > web

Dr. Heike Herata

has been Head of the Protection of the Arctic and Antarctic Section at the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) since 2006. Prior to taking this position, the hydrologist had studied and completed her doctorate at the Technical University of Dresden and was a research associate at the Institute of Water Management (Institut für Wasserwirtschaft) in Berlin. In 1991 she became a research associate at the Federal Environment Agency, working first on marine protection and later in the Discharges and Inputs to Surface Waters Section. As part of her current position she is in charge of enforcing the German Act implementing the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (AUG), which makes her the Head of the national regulatory body for the Antarctic. Additionally, at the international level she contributes to the work of the ATCM, CCAMLR and IAATO. In 2014 her role was expanded to include the protection of the Arctic. As part of this role, Heike Herata is involved in negotiations conducted in the Arctic Council and in the IMO. > web

Dr. Thomas Hollands

is an expert on remote sensing data and on observations of sea-ice movement from space. From 2009 to 2019 he was a research associate of the Earth Observations Systems working group of the Polar Meteorology Section at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. During this time the geoscientist completed his doctorate on motion tracking of sea ice with satellite data. His subsequent work included the development of methods allowing for the observation and classification of polynya events by combining a number of different satellite sensors. Based on these data it is possible, for example, to estimate the amount of sea ice produced in the polynya. > web

Prof. Dr. Angelika Humbert

is a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven where she leads the working group on ice-sheet modelling. The aim of this working group is to develop an understanding of the physical processes underlying the flow of ice in ice sheets, ice streams and glaciers that is sufficiently precise to allow for their expression as mathematical formulas in computer-based ice models, which will help to predict the dynamics of ice masses, their future development and their contribution to sea-level rise. To this end, the ice modelling team conducts both process and systems studies. In process studies the scientists model, for example, the effects of subglacial water, warming of the ice, or the migration of the grounding lines of glaciers or ice shelves. Systems studies include investigations of the behaviour of entire ice sheets or of individual ice-stream/ice-shelf systems, such as the Recovery Glacier or the Filchner Ice Shelf. > web > web

Dr. Ralf Jaiser

is a physicist working as a climate modeler in the Atmospheric Physics Section of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam. He specializes in the large-scale circulation of air masses up into the stratosphere and its change over time. Instead of measuring the circulation patterns himself, Dr. Jaiser analyses the many datasets available from climate models. Among other outcomes, his research contributes to understanding how sea-ice decline in the Arctic Barents Sea and Kara Sea weakens the jet stream and thus also impacts mid-latitude weather. > web > web

Dr. Sebastian Knecht

is a research associate at the Sociology Faculty of the University of Bielefeld. His research mainly focuses on international relations, geopolitical narratives, institutional change and the transfer of scientific knowledge with regard to polar and maritime governance. He is coeditor of the book Governing Arctic Change: Global Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan) and co-author of the German language introductory textbook on international policy and governance in the Arctic entitled Internatio­nale Politik und Governance in der Arktis: Eine Einleitung (Springer). > web

Dr. Gert König-Langlo

studied meteorology at the University of Hamburg and, following his graduation, overwintered at the German Georg von Neumayer Antarctic research station. He has been fascinated by the Antarctic ever since. In 1989 he became a research associate at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) where he became scientific leader of the meteorological observatories at the Neumayer Antarctic research station and on the German research icebreaker Polarstern. Both of these observatories collect long-term meteorological data for climate research. For several years up until his retirement in 2017, Gert König-Langlo was also Director of the World ­Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC), which as the central ­archive of the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) makes available to climate scientists the best possible surface radiation measurements. > web

Dr. Thomas Krumpen

is a sea-ice physicist conducting research at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. The focus of his work is on the impact of climate change on Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. In particular he is interested in determining which atmospheric and oceanographic processes govern changes in the polar regions and in determining the implications for sea-ice-associated ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles resulting from the changing ice cover. To these ends, he draws on satellite data that provide information on changes in sea-ice thickness and spatial extent over the past 35 years. The satellite data are supplemented with measurements taken as part of expeditions of the research vessel Polarstern or by the Polar 5 and Polar 6 polar research aircraft. The focus of these measurements is on recording ice thickness in key Arctic regions by means of a sensor called the “EM-Bird”. > web > web

Dr. Stefan Kruse

works as an ecologist and vegetation modeller in the Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems research group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam. Changes in polar vegetation in the wake of current climate change are his specialty area, and in particular changes of the treeline. To this end, he studies areas of tundra and forest with varying species composition and vegeta­tion density, and records tree growth using dendroecological methods. Moreover, the scientist uses the genetic information of individual trees in order to draw conclusions on their short-distance and long-distance distribution. He processes the data col­lected in an individuals-based forest computer model that he himself has programmed. The model makes it possible to apply climate scenarios in order to test the impacts of warming on the vegetation. For example, Stefan Kruse was able to show that the treeline is moving northward at a much slower pace than warming currently allows. > web > web

Dr. Andreas Läufer

has been Head of the Polar Geology Unit at the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover and is a specialist on Antarctic geology and geodynamic processes. In order to understand these processes, the structural geologist has undertaken regular research expe­ditions to the Antarctic over the past 30 years. One of his target areas is Victoria Land with the adjacent Ross Sea region, where he uses geological and geophysical methods to study rocks not ­covered by ice in order to identify indicators that allow for a reconstruction of the formation and breakup of the southern supercontinent Gondwana. Dr. Andreas Läufer" class="alignright">> web

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Lüdecke

teaches the history of natural ­science at the University of Hamburg and has been a correspond­ing member of the International Academy of the History of ­Science in Paris since 2012. For almost 30 years now she has been leading the History of Polar Research working group of the German Society of Polar Research and since 2004 she has chaired the History of Antarctic Research Expert Group of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). She has authored 18 monographs and more than 180 papers on the history of meteorology, geography, oceanography and polar research. Since 2012 she has also been Vice President of the International Commission of the History of Oceanography. > web

Dr. Stefanie Lutz

is a microbiologist and expert on the diversity and ecology of microorganisms in cold environments, and especially in the Arctic. For her PhD thesis at the University of Leeds she investigated pigmented snow and ice algae and their contribution to the darkening of glacial surfaces in the Arctic and Ant­arctic. She thus contributed to an understanding of the degree to which snow and ice algae increase the rate of glacial surface ­melting. As a postdoctoral research assistant at Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) she continued this research at the interface of microbiology, microbial ecology and bioinformatics and was involved, for example, in the Black & Bloom interdisciplinary research project in Greenland. She currently works as a research associate at Agroscope in ­Switzerland. > web

Dr. Felix Mark

is a marine biologist and research scientist at the Integrative Ecophysiology Section of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. He has specialized in physiological adaptation mechanisms of marine ectotherms and investigates the organisms’ responses to marine warming, ocean acidification and oxygen depletion, from the organism as a whole down to the molecular level, and with a particular focus on polar fish. Felix Mark undertakes regular expeditions to the polar seas and was the consortium leader of “Theme 3: Ocean Acidification and Warming Impacts Across Natural Systems and Society: From Mechanisms to Sensitivities and Societal Adaptation” as part of the major German research programme on Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification (BIOACID). > web

Dr. Marion Maturilli

is an atmospheric physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam and is responsible for the Meteorological Observatory of the German-French AWIPEV research base in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. Using the long-term meteorological data collected at the observatory, she investigates climatic changes in Svalbard and in the European part of the Arctic, with a focus on the occurrence of low-pressure areas and on the changing atmospheric heat and moisture transport into the Arctic. In a number of different studies, the atmospheric researcher has also combined observational data from terrestrial surfaces, oceans and sea ice in order to improve the understanding of the complex interactive processes at play in the Arctic and their contributions to “Arctic amplification”. > web > web

Dr. Michaela Mayer

has been working as a marine biologist and ornithologist in the polar regions since 1994. The sites of her research work have included on board the German research icebreaker Polarstern, at the German-French AWIPEV research base in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, and at the Argentinian Antarctic research station Carlini on King George Island. When she is not on a research expedition, the scientist manages a private institute for sustainable activities at sea (Institut für Nachhaltige Aktivitäten auf See, INASEA), which she established in Bremen, and where she carries out studies on environmental impacts of tourism, shipping, offshore projects and other human activities at sea, develops strategies for reconciling environmental protection and cost-effective project implementation, and advises companies on environmental management issues. > web

Prof. Dr. Bettina Meyer

is Head of the working group on “Ecophysiology of pelagic key species” at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). The aim of her working group is to identify physiological bottlenecks in the life cycles of pelagic key species such as krill, calanoid copepods and salps, to investigate their productive and adaptive capacity with regard to (anthropogenic) environmental change, and to understand the impact of these species in biogeochemical cycles. The data obtained are taken into account in individuals-based modelling and in ecosystem models that allow for predictions of population changes in key organisms and for an understanding of the ecosystem-level impacts of these changes. > web > web

Dr. Katja Mintenbeck

is a research marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. Her work focuses on the ecology of Antarctic marine biocoenoses and the sensitivity of Antarctic fish to disturbances and environmental change. Since 2017 she has also worked as the Scientific Director of the IPCC Working Group II Technical Support Unit. As part of this role she was responsible for the IPCC Special Report Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, published in September 2019. > web

Dr. Juliane Müller

is a geoscientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, where she heads PALICE, the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group. The aim of PALICE is to investigate changes in polar sea-ice cover and associated shifts in oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns during past climate fluctuations. To this end, the team analyses marine sediment cores, searching for fossil organic molecules, i.e. biomarkers, preserved in the sediment. These allow the scientists to determine if and when the region in which the core was taken was covered with sea ice. The resultant data are an important basis for the development and testing of climate models.

Dr. Ilka Peeken

is a research sea-ice ecologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven where she studies the ecology, biogeochemistry and pollution of sea ice. She primarily focuses on the interconnections between sea ice and the various organisms living in or underneath the ice with a view to determining the extent to which climate change is altering sea-ice habitats and what these changes mean for the marine environment. To this end she takes sea-ice samples in the course of numerous expeditions, analyses the species diversity of the marine organisms living in the sea ice, studies the role of these species in the global carbon cycle, and looks at the impacts of the shift from multi-year ice to one-year ice on the ecosystem’s biodiversity and carbon production. As a parallel endeavour, she measures sea-ice pollution by microplastic particles and investigates the impact of this pollution on sea-ice organisms. > web

Dr. Karsten Piepjohn

is a polar geologist at the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover where he investigates the geodynamics of continental margins around the Arctic Ocean. His focus is on the initial opening of the Arctic Ocean and related magmatism, the development of sedimentary basins, and the formation of a deformation belt extending from Svalbard across northern Greenland to far into the Canadian Arctic, which is connected to the opening of the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. > web

Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß

is a legal scholar and lecturer on international maritime and environmental law, international law and public law at the Law Faculty of the University of Hamburg. In addition to aspects of general international and European law, his areas of research primarily include international environmental law and the law of the sea, foreign constitutional law and selected areas of national environmental law. He is involved in numerous national and international research projects and also contributes his expertise to major projects such as the Priority ­Programme on Climate Engineering of the German Research Foundation (DFG). > web

Dr. Benjamin Rabe

is a research oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven where he investigates the composition and circulation of Arctic Ocean water masses. Together with a Swedish colleague he is coordinating the oceanographic research to be undertaken during the year-long drift in the Arctic by the German research icebreaker Polarstern (MOSAiC expedition). In the autumn of 2019, the ship will let itself get trapped in the sea ice north of Siberia and will then drift in the pack ice for an entire year across the North Pole and toward the Fram Strait. During this time, scientists from seventeen nations will study the sea ice, as well as the ocean beneath and the atmosphere above it, in order to determine how these components of the polar climate system interact and which of the interactions give rise to the rapid decline of the Arctic sea ice. > web > web

Dr. Volker Rachold

is Head of the German Arctic Office at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). In this role, the former permafrost researcher and long-term Director of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) advises the German federal government on questions related to the Arctic. For example, he substantively prepared the 2nd Arctic Science Ministerial Conference on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. On behalf of the Federal Foreign Office he supported the German representatives in the Arctic Council’s Arctic Moni­toring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) working group. His own scientific career began as a geochemist, a scientific discipline in which he completed his doctorate and postdoctoral habilitation. > web

Dr. Thomas Rackow

studied technomathematics and completed his studies with a thesis on iceberg drift. He subsequently completed his doctorate in physics at the University of Bremen. Since 2015 he has been working as a climate modeller at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven where he studies mechanisms that give rise to climate variability. His aim is to integrate processes currently missing from contemporary climate simulations, such as minor eddies or iceberg drift, and to thereby improve the resultant climate predictions. Thomas Rackow is also involved in science communication. For example, as part of the MOSAiC Summer School on board the Russian icebreaker Akademik Fedorov he taught 20 international Masters and PhD students how to mathematically predict the motions of sea ice and drifting objects such as icebergs. > web > web

Dr. Christoph Ritter

is an atmospheric research physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and he spends an average of seven weeks every year at the Meteorological Observatory of the German-French AWIPEV Arctic research base in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. At AWIPEV he uses the LIDAR system – an instrument consisting of a laser, a telescope and a counting unit – to shoot laser pulses several kilometres up into the sky and measure their reflection in order to study atmospheric aerosols. His aim is to determine as precisely as possible the distribution of different aerosol types present in the atmosphere with a view to improving the simulations by climate models of the aerosols’ impact on the climate. > web

Dr. Ingo Sasgen

is a geoscientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. He uses satellites to study the growth and shrinkage of the polar ice sheets. Among other things, this allows the remote sensing expert to draw conclusions on the meltwater contributions to global sea-level rise made by Greenland and the Antarctic. He also combines satellite data on the gravitational field of the ice masses with radar data on changes in the elevation of the ice surface. This makes it possible for him to show in high resolution the regions in which the ice sheets are shrinking at a particularly fast rate and how the ice-loss zones are expanding over time. Together with a colleague at the AWI he is currently developing a new statistical forecasting method for predicting mass flux of the Greenland Ice Sheet. > web

Prof. Dr. Ursula Schauer

is an oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. In the course of her science career she has led several expeditions of the German research icebreaker Polarstern to the Arctic. She is a distinguished expert on the Arctic Ocean circulation. Her research work includes investigations of deep-water formation in the far north, long-term changes in the temperature and salinity of the Arctic Ocean, and interactions between the ocean and extensions of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The knowledge that between 1980 and 2010 Greenland Sea deep-water warming has been about ten times higher than average warming rates estimated for the global ocean is one of the products of her studies and measurements. > web > web

Dr. Stephan Schiffels

is Leader of the Population Genetics group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. His research aims at reconstructing global relationships among population groups as well as prehistoric population movements. To this end he analyses and compares genetic data obtained from archaeological sites (DNA from skeletal remains) with those of people currently alive. As a parallel endeavour, the scientist – who holds a doctorate in physics – developed new statistical and bioinformatics methods that allow for the ever more sizeable sets of genetic data to be processed and investigated. Among other activities, he led an international study in 2019 on the genetic origins of the North American First Peoples, especially of those in the American Arctic. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature. > web

Dr. Volker Strass

is a seafaring oceanographer at the Physical Oceanography of Polar Seas Section of the Climate Sciences Division at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven. His scientific research covers a broad range of topics, ranging from the large-scale meridional ocean circulation to the mesoscale dynamics of fronts and eddies, and down to small-scale turbulent fluxes between the ocean’s surface mixed layer and the atmosphere. In this context he is particularly interested in those climate-relevant processes that govern oceanic heat and carbon uptake. With regard to carbon uptake, he also concerns himself with biogeochemical cycles and engages in interdisciplinary research on the impact of physical processes on photosynthesis, and – using acoustic techniques – on interactions between phytoplankton and zooplankton and the resultant sinking of organic matter. Most of his research expeditions take Volker Strass to the Southern Ocean, primarily to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current region and into the Weddell Sea. > web > web

Dr. Jens Strauss

is a geoecologist who heads the working group on Permafrost Biogeochemistry of the Permafrost Research Section at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam. He has specialized in deep ice-rich permafrost (Yedoma) and his research strives to determine the size of the organic carbon pool frozen in Yedoma, the quality of this carbon, and the speed at which it may be broken down by microorganisms and released in the form of greenhouse gases if it thaws. His field research serves as a basis for models that calculate the quantities of carbon dioxide and ­methane naturally emitted in the event of large-scale permafrost thawing. Jens Strauss is currently the lead scientist on a project addressing this issue. The project entitled Changing Arctic Carbon Cycle in the Coastal Ocean Nearshore (CACOON) is co-financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. > web > web

Dr. Johannes Sutter

is an ice modeller at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven and at the Climate and Environmental Physics division of the University of Bern. His research focuses on the question of how Antarctic ice masses reacted to past warm ­periods, and he develops scenarios with regard to the contribution to sea-level rise by the Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of future climate change. His ice-sheet modelling has helped in the search for ideal drill sites for the “Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice” interna­tional research project in the course of which glaciologists endeavour to retrieve ice cores from the oldest ice in Antarctica.

Prof. Dr. Jörn Thiede

is a geologist and palaeontologist. Since 2011 he has been the Director of the Köppen Laboratory of the Institute of Earth Sciences at Saint Petersburg State University/RF. Earlier in his career, the Professor of Palaeo-Oceanography in Kiel had worked as the foundational Director of the Research Centre for Marine Geosciences, a precursor to the current GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. He subsequently ­became the Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, a position he held for ten years. He has travelled all the world’s oceans as part of national and international expeditions on research vessels with a view to understanding the history of the oceans’ physiography, their water masses, and the organisms that inhabit them. Jörn Thiede has received numerous prestigious research awards for his scientific achievements and been inducted into science academies at home and abroad. > web

Dr. Renate Treffeisen

is the Head of the Climate Office for Polar Regions and Sea Level Rise at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremer­haven. As part of this role, the former atmospheric research scientist develops innovative formats for conveying research results from the polar regions that allow them to be utilized by decision-makers in the policy sphere, the business world and society at large. In her additional role as science editor, she also administers the meereisportal.de online portal in which sea-ice researchers at the AWI and the University of Bremen make available sea-ice data and regularly publish analyses on the development of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets. > web > web