A new year has come and it seems like winter is finally there too. The snow cover has gotten better since a while already, but latley the temperatures have dropped quite a bit as well. But above all, we had wind. A lot of wind. Wind with snow and wind without snow. But even then, the snow on the ... [Read more]
The AWIPEV arctic station is situated at 79 degrees latitude. This is even 8.4 degrees closer to the pole than the Neumayer station in Antarctica. Concerning climate this place is much more hospital but polar day and polar night last longer. Ny-Ålesund lies in the North of the Zeppelin mountain ... [Read more]
At our station we have several permanent Observatories, one of them is the UnderWaterObservatory (UWO) belonging to the the Alfred-Wegener-Instiut, Helmholtz Centre for Polar- and Marine Research. The system consists of two parts: One is the so called ‘Underwater Node’ which is installed at the ... [Read more]
A lot of scientists in town are here to study Wildlife. Among them, some French ornithologists from the CEBC (Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé – La Rochelle). They are highly interested by Kittiwakes living some kilometers away from Ny-Alesund. I spent one day in the field with them and ... [Read more]
When it is dark over Ny-Ålesund, a bright green laser beam can be seen quite often, shooting from the AWIPEV observatory towards the clear sky. This beam belongs to a LIDAR system, runned by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Potsdam for more than 25 years. With this instrument scientists investigate ... [Read more]
In a few days the polar night is starting. To be precise, on October 24th, with the end of daylight saving. Then, for the next three and a half month, until February 18th next year. the sun will not rise above the horizon anymore. For now, the sun is still rising a couple degrees above the ... [Read more]
The summer has come to an end and the winter is slowly approaching. At night, the temperatures are falling below 0°C for most of the times and during the day it is only a few degrees above zero. Ice is forming on the creeks and lakes and the first snow has covered the mountains like icing sugar. ... [Read more]
Sarah Chadburn is a Post-Doc at the University of Exeter. She is a computer modeller and works on modelling permafrost. She had the opportunity to join the group of Julia Boike for maintenance work at the Bayelva field station here in Ny-Ålesund, to get an idea of the experimental set-up, which ... [Read more]
For the past eight days a student group from the University of Bremen and the University of Kiel has been visiting Ny-Ålesund and the AWIPEV Station. Kai Bischof and Wolfgang Bilger had done such a student excursion once, 10 years ago, and decided to come back. The students had the chance to explore ... [Read more]
The summer is almost over. Like on the mainland we can see that by the leaves turning from green to yellow. We do not have trees here, but small other flowers and plants. The geese in the village can be seen less and less. In the evening you can watch them flying formations. They are getting ... [Read more]
