Remote Sensing of Polar Regions, University of Bremen

Instruments installed on deck facing the sea-ice covered surface

Gunnar with the L-band radiometer on the sea ice

Polarstern as seen from the sea ice with lights on under foggy conditions

Since more than 2 weeks the RV Polarstern #SWOS expedition is now conducting research in the western Weddell Sea. The days are starting to get shorter while we are measuring L-band microwave brightness temperatures of sea ice to improve our satellite retrievals for the upcoming EU/ESA #CIMR mission.

GEOMAR building with a banner in the foreground saying "Status Conference Research Vessels 2026".

Greetings from GEOMAR in Kiel, where the Status Conference Research Vessels takes place and results from 2 years of research cruises (of all German research vessels!) are presented. The sheer amount of collected data, scientific discoveries and multi-disciplinary collaborations is very impressive!

Greetings from the (AC)³ science #conference in #Cologne where our two PhD students Linxin and Max are presenting their #research on sea ice deformation and melt ponds on #Arctic sea ice.

Nice discussions and a lot of valuable input for further improvements!

The #Polarstern SWOS #expedition to the #Antarctic Weddell Sea 🚢 🇦🇶 has started. During the weekend we left Punta Arenas 🇨🇱 and are now crossing the famous Drake Passage. Let's hope it is not getting to wavy 🌊 You can follow us under follow-polarstern.awi.de

Our colleague Linxin Zhang is attending the #winterschool at Sun Yat-sen University on "Arctic atmosphere–ocean–sea ice interactions and their linkages with mid-latitudes" in Zhuhai, #China. Absorbing new knowledge from lecturers from all over the world and enjoying many activities and talks!

Hey! I'm Raquel. I'm focusing on expanding a multi-parameter sea-ice retrieval to also work over land ice for my Master Thesis 🏔️

I'm Goli! I'm working with ASCAT (C-band scatterometer) data to produce sea ice drift for the Arctic for my Master Thesis. ✨️☺️

Hi, I'm Isabel. I'm writing my master thesis about surface reconstruction of Earth's polar regions and the icy moons 🌒 Besides, I'm working as a student assistant on creating a sea ice concentration time series from microwave data 🇦🇶

The three cryosphere musketeers ❄️

Moin! We're the master students of the Remote Sensing of Polar Regions group 🤗
From left to right: Isabel, Goli and Raquel. Interested in what we're working on?
Then look in the comments down below for more info about our thesis projects...

Our colleague Janna (@jannaeismeer.bsky.social) is currently in Bern, Switzerland 🇨🇭at the meeting of the Snow/Sea Ice Emission and Backscatter Modelling team (ISSI) working on how to represent snow and (sea) ice surfaces for numerical weather predictions. Full days of lively discussions!

two people in the snow measuring and digging

selfie of 7 people holding up snow measurement instruments

bird's eye view of snow pit

We welcomed the current low-pressure system, #Elli, with open arms and used it as an opportunity to gain #fieldwork experience. How often do we get the chance to measure up to 20 cm of #snow in Bremen? ❄️

part of our group at the Christmas party

selfie of part of our group at the Christmas market

The scent of the holidays is in the air, both at the Christmas market & our Institute's Christmas party! 🎄🤶🎅 We're also happy to have welcomed Ferran Hernández Macià from Barcelona Polar Lab as a visiting doctoral researcher for the past two weeks. We wish you all happy holidays, see you next year!

Yesterday, most of our working group spent the evening at a #pubquiz 🤓 Although we had to split into two groups and compete against each other, we ended up with the same number of points and reunited 😄

Great news! The CIMR-L2PAD project 🛰️ successfully passed the Detailed Design Review stage at a collaborative meeting at @esa.int ESRIN 🇮🇹!
Maria Piles and our colleague Marcus Huntemann enjoyed the fruitful meeting, despite difficult weather conditions 🚀

Gunnar standing at the entry of the DWD (Germany Weather Service)

What satellites will we need for science and society by 2040 and beyond? This is the topic of the national science expert group workshop at Deutscher Wetterdienst @dwdderwetterdienst.bsky.social in Offenbach this week.

Hi! 🤗 I’m Zhifeng, and I recently joined the group as a visiting PhD candidate from the Ocean University of China for 1 year. Coming from physical oceanography my current research focuses on retrieving summer sea ice concentration from passive microwave observations, with a focus on melt ponds.

Intensive and very productive workshop at @esa.int ESRIN in #Frascati 🇮🇹 to write the science plan 📝 for the large, international #AntarcticaInSync initiative! 🤝

More information about Antarctica InSync: www.antarctica-insync.org

Great to get the latest news about the AMSR3 instrument on the recently launched GOSAT-GW #satellite 🛰️, during the
JAXA PI meeting last week in #Tokyo. First data was shown and is looking great! 🥳 We are looking forward to make use of the new 183 GHz channels.

Marcus giving a talk, standing in front of a slide about the CIMR product

2 weeks ago, our colleague Marcus gave an overview of the CIMR L2 Snow depth retrieval implemented within the L2PAD project on the @esa.int #CIMR Expert User Group workshop in Barcelona. Now we're addressing the valuable comments and feedback. Another month till the detailed design review, let's go!

It is now official: #WIVERN has been selected as @esa.int Earth Explorer 11 mission! ➡️ www.esa.int/Applications...
We were involved in studying how the 94 GHz radiometer and Doppler radar can be used for sea-ice observations and are therefore very happy and excited that this instrument will fly!

Four people from the working group on a roof terrace under blue sky

Greetings from Potsdam! 4 of us were attending the general assembly of the (AC)3 research project www.ac3-tr.de this week. We showed and admired posters about different topics all the way from the #Arctic ocean to high clouds and discussed our cross-cutting activities.

Regional and seasonal evolution of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice Abstract. Melt ponds on sea ice significantly modify the absorption of solar radiation by the sea ice-ocean system in the Arctic, thereby influencing the energy budget and sea ice mass balance. Conseq...

Are you interested in the regional differences of melt pond formation and evolution in the Arctic? Or did you ever wonder how these are related to the sea ice surface topography and ice types? Then check out our new paper: tc.copernicus.org/articles/19/...

Die Maritime Woche 2025 - Feiern an der Weser Bremen feiert seinen maritimen Charakter!

Attention locals: This week is maritime week in #Bremen. Saturday and Sunday you can visit the Forschungsmeile (mile of research) at the Weser river where you find us and our little sea ice experiments (for kids and grown-ups!) www.bremen.de/kultur/veran...

CONTRASTS wraps up after 2 months in the central Arctic aboard RV Polarstern: 61 days at sea, 30+ days on sea ice, terabytes of data, and 3 ice floes revisited across 3 ice regimes. Big thanks to the 43 crew supporting 57 scientists on RV Polarstern. AWI press release: www.awi.de/en/about-us/...

As the giant #Antarctic iceberg #A23a is currently breaking apart, we created a video about its dance in the water in the last year, including spinning in a Taylor column! Even though A23a is not sea ice, the microwave signature is similar and it shows up in our data! Can you spot it in the video?

Smiling Gunnar standing in fron of radiometer on pulka with Polarstern in the background

Radiometer mounted on pulka in foreground, person taking measurements and research vessel Polarstern in the background.

Radiometer mounted on pulka in front of a beautiful fresh sea ice area.

Hi! I’m ARIEL, an L-band microwave radiometer 📡, and this is my little buddy Sebastian (the pulka 🛷). Together, we traveled across 3 Arctic ice stations ❄️ to uncover the invisible (aka microwave) secrets of ever-changing summer sea ice and its thickness on the @awi.de CONTRASTS #expedition 🧊.

Can the color of melt ponds reveal the sea-ice thickness below? 🧊 And can we measure this from #space? 🛰️ On the @awi.de CONTRASTS #expedition, we’re testing this with a 200+ band hyperspectral camera and co-located ice thickness measurements for a large variety of #Arctic ponds.

two people on the sea ice installing instruments

sea ice floe with people on it with the ship in the back taken from a drone

Isabel on the ice at the North Pole in front of the ship

One of our master students, Isabel Krüll, had the great opportunity to join a cruise of Le Commandant Charcot to do some research at the North pole. They were able to do 2 ice floe landings with drone flights, ice thickness measurements & buoy deployments and even saw a polar bear with its cub.

Update from the #Arctic from our #CONTRASTS expedition participants: A sunny, peaceful transit day brought a magical sight — a young polar bear 🐻‍❄️ wandering along the edge of an ice floe. It is very fascinating to see such a beautiful creature!