• Development and Application of coupled regional climate models for the Arctic and the Antarctic
• Study of the atmospheric boundary layer
• Sea ice mass balance and the interactions with the ocean
• Ocean circulation and modification of water mass
• Ocean dynamics and sea level changes
• climate dynamics on palaeo time scales
• Remote sensing and modeling of marine ecosystems

Examples of the climate research competences include:

REKLIM

The research association REKLIM is an initiative of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, of which eight research centers in the fields of Earth and environmental science study the impact of climate change on the regional scale. The Alfred Wegener Institute is particularly involved in the fields of climate sciences and geosciences, where its activities range from the regional climate modeling of the Earth system to observation programs on the Arctic and the examination of the impact of chemical processes in the atmosphere.

Sea level change and ice sheet mass balance

The sea level and ice sheet mass balance project group is an intersectional working group from the Climate Sciences and Geosciences divisions, which, on the one hand aim to specify the mass contribution of the ice sheets towards the sea level rise and on the other hand explicate the density driven contribution and the impact of changes in water currents due to fresh water by means of observations, process studies and modeling.

World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC)

The World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC) is an international archive for radiation data, which provides climate researchers with high-precision meteorological measurement series. After the unique archive passed a 15-year termtime at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (in German Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich or ETH Zürich (ETHZ)), its maintenance and further development was assumed by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. The data is used for climate observations, monitoring of anthropogenic impacts on the Earth’s atmosphere, as well as the improvement of climate forecasts.