The Polar Night began on 20 May. At first you tend to think that in the Polar Night everything is always dark. And of course, not much light comes from outside; inside, the lights are always turned on. But still, it isn’t completely dark. Even in the middle of winter, at midday there is still ...[Read more]

Those are the temperatures we’ve had here for the past few days, and to be perfectly accurate I should add a minus before that number and be sure to mention the Earth’s shadow, because we’re now in a 2-month phase where we’ll constantly be on the dark side of our planet! While we read ...[Read more]

For Ilkka Pohjalainen it was only logical to come from Finland to GSI for a whole year– he had already been working with the FAIR project during his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Jyväskylä. “It is quite nice to have the opportunity to come to one of the top facilities for heavy ion research ...[Read more]

The first thing you notice is the silence. Once the helicopter has disappeared over the horizon, the only sounds are the faint cracking of ice, and water as it finds its way between the floes. Whichever way you look, you can only see ice, which blends into the sky in the distance. A few ...[Read more]

Bremerhaven – Fram Strait – Bremerhaven: since 24 May, the Polarstern has once again been underway. Her goal: to gather samples from the Arctic waters between Greenland and Svalbard. For five weeks, the crew and researchers will live together in cramped quarters on board the icebreaker. People ...[Read more]

Bremerhaven – Fram Strait – Bremerhaven: since 24 May, the Polarstern has once again been underway. Her goal: to gather samples from the Arctic waters between Greenland and Svalbard. For five weeks, the crew and researchers will live together in cramped quarters on board the icebreaker. People ...[Read more]

Life up here in Ny-Ålesund is simple, comfortable and rich. Although there is not a lot in terms of consumption and culture, the social contacts and the impressive nature are all over the place. Time goes by fast, scientists and other visitors come and go continuously. It is a repeating cycle ...[Read more]

PALAOA is a hydro-acoustic observatory, or in other words: a specially designed underwater microphone, called a hydrophone, ‘listens’ below the ice shelf and records the calls of seals and whales. The long-term observatory belongs to the Ocean Acoustics Group at the Alfred Wegener Institute ...[Read more]

About the author: Gertrud Nöth is deputy head of the Press and Public Relations at the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Germany’s National Weather Service. She has talked to DWD weather forecaster Christian Paulmann who spent six austral summer seasons at the German Neumayer Station in Antarctica. ...[Read more]

During our HeJu annual meeting 2021 (online) on 28th Jan, we elected our new HeJu steering committee as well as working group speakers for the term 2021-2022. We thank our previous steering committee - Michaela, Isabela (spokespersons) and Kevin (treasurer) - for their excellent work to unite ...[Read more]