Expedition to the South Pole
Will the eternal ice melt?

The research icebreaker Polarstern moves like a nutshell through the vastness of the Southern Ocean. Concentrated calm reigns on the bridge of the Polarstern as the research icebreaker finds its way through the waves. Scientific work is out of the question at this hour. But it is precisely here, in the stormiest latitudes in the world, that research should and must be carried out.

The Polarstern is located in the middle of the Southern Ocean on the world's strongest ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Due to global warming, it can shift southwards and thus carry warm water with it, which poses a massive threat to the world's largest ice sheet: East Antarctica. It is larger than the Australian continent and covered with ice up to four kilometres thick. Until now, East Antarctica was considered particularly resistant to global warming, but researchers are now discovering how quickly its ice sheet could lose its stability. If the massive glaciers of East Antarctica were to melt completely, the result would be a global sea level rise of up to 52 metres. But that's not all. This melt could mean that the coldest, saltiest and therefore heaviest body of water on the planet would no longer be formed: Antarctic bottom water, one of the most important drivers of our global ocean circulation. If it were to dry up, all the world's ocean currents and thus our entire climate dynamics would change. How stable is the East Antarctic ice sheet still?

With this question in mind, a highly specialised group of researchers and an experienced ship's crew will set sail on a challenging expedition aboard the legendary research icebreaker Polarstern in November 2023. Using heavy equipment, the crew and scientists will investigate the location of the ocean current in one of the stormiest sea areas in the world, set course for East Antarctica, set up land camps there, explore the land masses by helicopter, take rock and ice samples wherever possible, and find themselves almost always on unexplored land in this infinite expanse. It is science under extreme conditions far from any civilisation, demanding a great deal of stamina, strength, patience and trust from the nearly one hundred souls on board.

The research vessel Polarstern is the most important tool for German polar research and the flagship of the Alfred-Wegener-Instituts.