Von Jasmin Heiden, Florian Koch et al. We are 12 biologists and chemists on board R.V. Polarstern from several research institutes (Alfred Wegener Institute, Universities of Geneva, Bremen and Oldenburg and the ETH Zürich) that constitute the working group ProIron. Our mission on board is to ... [Read more]
By Thomas Ronge | As mentioned before, we use sediment cores from the ocean floor for our climate reconstructions as well as for our analyses of the regional geological history. Because we are working in an area where geological data are sparse, it’s not always easy to find a suitable ... [Read more]
By Thomas Ronge | On August 8th 1914 the British barquetine Endurance left the port of Plymouth. The British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 27 men planned to sail towards the Antarctic Weddell Sea in order to conduct the first transantarctic expedition. After a short stopover in ... [Read more]
By Thomas Ronge | Recently, we arrived in our working area at the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands. Here we want to retrieve highly resolved sediment cores. This means that we can reconstruct only a short time period of the geological and climatological past with these ... [Read more]
By Alessa J. Geiger & Max Zundel | With the Polarstern route change at the very beginning of our expedition, exiting the Strait of Magellan via the Atlantic and not through the Pacific, our pre-selected land study areas seemed far out of reach. Max Zundel and I (Alessa Geiger) had teamed ... [Read more]
By Lutz Eberlein and Peter Busch | One focus in the field of geodesy the analysis of crustal dynamics. For our work, we establish GPS-marker points on rock outcrops. To find these spots we have to leave the vessel and work on land. This work includes the privilege to use the ship-based ... [Read more]
By Thomas Ronge | Pressure can be an interesting thing. Deep inside the Earth’s interior, pressure transforms ordinary carbon into glittering diamonds (45-60 kilobar). Or, in combination with hot water it turns roasted Kona coffee (~9 bar) into the perfect espresso. Besides this, pressure is ... [Read more]
By Gastón Kreps, Vania Carrera & Bruno Canella | Why are observers aboard R/V Polarstern? The PS97 campaign is planned to be realized in the southern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Doing so, large parts of our working area are located within Argentinean and Chilean costal and offshore ... [Read more]
