Outposts of Science - Helmholtz Worldwide

From Svalbard (Spitsbergen), across the Pacific Ocean to Antarctica – scientists are active worldwide. In the "Meet the Scientist" format, visitors of Berlin Science Week experienced how data on Earth's atmosphere and climate are collected. During a live link to Helmholtz research stations, questions about the lives of researchers at the remote stations could be asked and discussed. The event, which took place on November 4th, 2023, at the Natural History Museum, was moderated by Rosmarie Wirth from the German Electron Synchrotron DESY and the University of Hamburg, as well as Matthew Slater from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and was jointly organized by the Helmholtz-Klima-Initiative and Helmholtz SynCom.

Fieke Rader, station director of AWIPEV on Svalbard, works and lives in a small research village far north of the Arctic Circle. The village is home almost exclusively to researchers from a variety of nationalities, including France, Germany, Norway, China, the USA, and Great Britain. There's no restaurant, a small supermarket, open twice a week for one hour, and a bar are run by the village residents themselves. And soon the polar night will begin, lasting two months. "For a week, it won't be light at all," says Fieke. But the transition phase is the hardest. A fixed daily rhythm, the northern lights, and the starry sky help cope with the darkness: "I think the night has many beautiful aspects," says the station manager on Svalbard. And even in winter, people know how to keep themselves busy. There's a sports hall where, among other things, indoor hockey is played twice a week, and "on Thursdays, we knit together."

Master's student Lisa Rüther reported on her experiences at the Palau Atmospheric Observatory. Under normal conditions, the air in Palau is very clean, and because the ocean is so warm, there is a lot of cloud formation. The location is also well-suited for atmospheric research because there is an active exchange between the troposphere and the stratosphere. In contrast to the other outstations, where nobody is there except the researchers, the people on Palau live off tourism. If Lisa wants a pizza, she only has to go to a restaurant a few streets away – quite unlike Fieke.

Nellie Wullenweber (Air Chemistry Observatory) and Lukas Muser (Meteorological Observatory) joined in from the roof of Neumayer-Station III in the Antarctic cold. Nellie and Lukas are part of this year's overwintering team, consisting of five researchers, three technical staff, a cook, and a doctor, and have spent the last few months at the station as a team of ten. "It never really got boring," says Lukas. They did a lot of sports and played games. Nevertheless, the limited contact with family and friends was difficult – they simply couldn't attend birthdays and weddings.

Like at the Arctic station in Savalbard, a weather balloon is launched from the roof of Neumayer Station III in Antarctica every day at noon. During the event, those present at Berlin Science Week were able to watch the launch of such a weather balloon live. A small box is attached to the helium-filled latex balloon, which measures pressure, temperature, and humidity, among other things. The balloon rises 30 kilometers into the air and transmits the measured data directly to the station via radio. This way, important measurements are collected over days, months, and years, allowing them to record changes in the atmosphere over a longer period of time.

The researchers at the remote stations not only experience many things that are different from those at home, but also see how the world and the climate are changing. They know what it looked like in the 1990s, and there are glaciers that have melted by several kilometers since then. "You can see the differences very clearly – the warming very clearly," explains Fieke. The topic is also present at the Palau Atmospheric Observatory. Lisa points out that Palau is part of Micronesia, an island group "that primarily is affected by sea level rise." There are some countries that have forecasts as to when their land will disappear into the sea, making the region uninhabitable. Although Nellie and Lukas have only recently arrived on the Neumayer and the station's records are stable, significantly less sea ice is forming in Antarctica than usual. Larger snow masses also indicate that the air is getting warmer and therefore more humid.

Exciting adventures and intense experiences make a research stay at a Helmholtz outstation unforgettable. "It's the overall package that makes it so exciting here," reports Fieke. The landscape always looks different due to the changing light, it never gets boring, and it's special to live in such a community. For Lisa, it's an "intense time in which you gather so many impressions." "There's always something new," and you do "things you wouldn't have dared to do before." Seeing the northern lights for the first time was very impressive for Nellie. A special experience was "seeing the sun again for the first time" - after two months of polar night. "You realize how much you've missed the sun."