Polar Research: Tracking Climate Processes

The polar regions are the climatic chambers of the Earth. Exchanges between ocean, ice and atmosphere provide important information on climate changes. Mathematical models for a reliable interpretation of the data are still lacking. Research in the Arctic and Antarctic is therefore of major importance for our understanding of the climate.

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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.

New Station in the Antarctic

The BMBF is now financing the new polar station Neumayer III in the Antarctic. 30 million euro are earmarked for the 3,300 square metre structure made of environmentally compatible materials until its completion in 2008. The station is to provide researchers with an opportunity of collecting geoscientific, meteorological and biological data from the polar region.

The polar station is run by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). The AWI is financed 90 percent by the BMBF and operates, for German polar research, the research icebreaker "Polarstern", one of the most powerful polar research vessels of the world, in addition to the polar stations in the Arctic on Spitzbergen and in the Antarctic.