topic Research

Polar Research: Tracking Climate Processes

The polar regions of our planet play an important role in climate processes. By different processes, the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is extracted from the atmosphere and transported into great depths in the seas of the polar and sub-polar regions. These processes have not yet been fully understood scientifically. It is, for example, unclear whether the CO₂ processing plankton algae are "fertilized" by man-made CO₂ emissions or damaged by stronger ultraviolet rays caused by the hole in the ozone layer above the polar caps. It is therefore impossible to determine whether their contribution to this natural relief system is growing or decreasing.

This is only one of the questions to which polar research is to provide an answer. Increased research efforts are to identify the interrelations between ocean, ice and atmosphere and to better describe them mathematically.

Measurements for model calculations on exchange processes on the interfaces between sea, atmosphere and ice are particularly important. Only better data and models enable interpretations on sediment and ice samples of deep drillings in the polar regions. Due to the drillings we have a unique climate archive of the polar regions. But the interpretation of the measurement results is currently insufficient for reliable statements on cause and effect of climate changes in the history of the Earth. The BMBF supports Antarctic research with over 50 million euro annually.