Manfred Wendisch, head of the Institute for Meteorology at Leipzig University, was in the Arctic as deputy expedition leader for the polar aircraft. Photo: Stephan Schön, Sächsische Zeitung
Manfred Wendisch, head of the Institute for Meteorology at Leipzig University, was in the Arctic as deputy expedition leader for the polar aircraft. Photo: Stephan Schön, Sächsische Zeitung With the return of the Polarstern, the largest Arctic expedition of all time has come to a successful end. For more than a year, the German research icebreaker travelled in five cruise legs with more than 400 people from 20 countries to investigate the epicentre of climate change more precisely than ever before. The complex project was also a success from Leipzig's point of view: all seven participants from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and Leipzig University are back in good health and with valuable climate data. Professor Manfred Wendisch, head of the Institute for Meteorology at Leipzig University, was in the Arctic as deputy expedition leader for the polar aircraft. Photo: Stephan Schön, Sächsische Zeitung At the end of the expedition, which cost around 140 million euros, the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), came to a positive conclusion: despite all the unforeseeable difficulties, it had succeeded in advancing knowledge about the Earth's climate system and its changes by a decisive step. Two measurement programmes involving Leipzig researchers that are central to research into the Arctic atmosphere were able to be carried out in full despite weather extremes and the coronavirus pandemic: a multi-wavelength lidar scanned the air layers above Polarstern during the entire expedition.
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