Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research is located in Bremerhaven, Germany, and a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. It conducts research in the Arctic, in the Antarctic and in the high and mid latitude oceans. Additional research topics are: North Sea research, marine biological monitoring and technical marine developments. The institute was founded in 1980 and is named after meteorologist, climatologist and geologist Alfred Wegener.ResearchThe institute has three major departments: Climate System Department, which studies oceans, ice and atmosphere as physical and chemical systems.Biosciences Department, which studies the biological processes in marine and coastal ecosystems.Geoscientific Department, which studies climate development, especially as revealed by sediments.FacilitiesThe institute is distributed over several sites within North Germany and the Otto Schmidt Laboratory for Polar and Marine Research (OSL) at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in Saint Petersburg as Russian-German cooperation in the field of Arctic research, named after the polar explorer Otto Schmidt.