Professorship for Physical Geography with a focus on Oceanography

AWI-LMU joint research group for Southern Ocean-Climate Interactions (SO-CLIM)

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Vision

Our group wants to raise awareness for the important role of the ocean and polar regions in the Earth’s system and how they are changing to strengthen efforts to limit human influences on the ocean, ice, and climate. In particular, with our work, we want to understand the essential role of the Southern Ocean, which encircles the Antarctic continent, in mitigating global climate change in the past, present, and future, and how this highly sensitive region of our planet responds to climatic changes.

Background

The Southern Ocean strongly influences the global climate through its interaction with Earth’s carbon, water, and energy budget. This important role arises from the vast exchange of water between the deep ocean and the sea surface that is unprecedented in the global ocean elsewhere. Over past decades, the Southern Ocean has substantially slowed global surface warming by absorbing most of the excess heat in the climate system and a large fraction of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, over the past years the Southern Ocean has experienced drastic changes and, to date, it remains uncertain if it will continue to slow down global surface warming in future to the extent that it has been providing such a service in the past.

Mission

While climate models make an important contribution to creating reliable information for decision-makers and society, they still do not represent past observed climatic changes in the Southern Ocean region adequately, leading to considerable uncertainties in future projections. In part, these difficulties arise from the inherent challenge to collect observational data in this region and the associated knowledge gap. In our group, we collect and use observational data and deploy numerical models to better understand processes and changes in the Southern Ocean and thus contribute to improving regional and global projections with model simulations.

International Iniatives

Antarctica InSync

Antarctica InSync is a globally coordinated scientific program of UN Ocean Decade that will synchronize research in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and will carry out year-round circumpolar fieldwork missions taking place in the period 2027 to 2029.

Sea Ice Mass Balance Assessment: Southern Ocean (SO-SIMBA)

SO-SIMBA is an ESA-funded collaboration between institutes in Germany, Norway, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom that will develop and validate novel methods and satellite remote sensing products to quantify Antarctic sea ice mass balance.

Towards best practices for Measuring and Archiving Stable Isotopes in Seawater (MASIS)

MASIS is a working groud of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) that seeks to remedy current issues of data collection, quality control, and compilation of stable isotopes in seawater. This effort will permit the full use of stable isotope datasets to track changes in the hydrological and bio-geochemical cycles, as well as in the anthropogenic carbon penetration in the ocean.

Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica (SOFIA) Initiative

The SOFIA Initiative aims to improve our understanding of the simulated response to Antarctic freshwater input, and in particular the model uncertainty. The initiative was started by the CliC/CLIVAR/SCAR Southern Ocean Regional Panel, is endorsed as a CLIVAR task team, and has been submitted as a community MIP to CMIP7.

People

Group members

Associate members and master's students

Past members

Dr. Alexander Weinhart

News

Publications

Pan, B. J., Gierach, M. M., Stammerjohn, S., Schofield, O., Meredith, M. P., Reynolds, R. A., Vernet, M., Haumann, F. A., Orona, A. J., & Miller, C. E. (2025). Impact of glacial meltwater on phytoplankton biomass along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Commun Earth Environ 6, 456. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02435-6

Stammerjohn, S., Eayrs, C., Haumann, F. A., Hobbs, W., Holland, M., Reid, P., Roach, L. A., & Smith, M. (2025). Antarctic Sea-Ice : Ongoing Changes and Compelling Issues. Antarctica and the Earth System, 115–140. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003406471-6

Olivier, L., Boutin, J., Reverdin, G., Hunt, C., Linkowski, T., Chase, A., Haentjens, N., Junger, P. C., Pesant, S., & Vandemark, D. (2025). Exploring the CO2 fugacity along the east coast of South America aboard the schooner Tara, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 3583–3598. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-3583-2025

Weinhart, A. H., Haumann, F. A., Robertson, E., Meyer, H., Marent, A., & Weiner, M. (2025). Seawater stable isotopes from the southeastern Atlantic during the GO-SHIP A13.5 2024 expedition [dataset]. PANGAEA. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.981232

Silvano, A., Narayanan, A., Catany, R., Olmedo, E., González‐Gambau, V., Turiel, A., Sabia, R., Mazloff, M. R., Spira, T., Haumann, F. A., & Garabato, A. C. N. (2025). Rising surface salinity and declining sea ice: A new Southern Ocean state revealed by satellites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(27). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2500440122

Friedlingstein, P., O’Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, . . . Olivier, L., . . . Zeng, J. (2025). Global Carbon Budget 2024. Earth System Science Data, 17(3), 965–1039. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-965-2025

Swart, N. C., Martin, T., Beadling, R., Chen, J., Danek, C., England, M. H., Farneti, R., Griffies, S. M., Hattermann, T., Hauck, J., Haumann, F. A., Jüling, A., Li, Q., Marshall, J., Muilwijk, M., Pauling, A. G., Purich, A., Smith, I. J., & Thomas, M. (2023). The Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica (SOFIA) Initiative: scientific objectives and experimental design. Geoscientific Model Development, 16(24), 7289–7309. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-7289-2023

Silvano, A., Purkey, S., Gordon, A. L., Castagno, P., Stewart, A. L., Rintoul, S. R., Foppert, A., Gunn, K. L., Herraiz-Borreguero, L., Aoki, S., Nakayama, Y., Garabato, A. C. N., Spingys, C., Akhoudas, C. H., Sallée, J., De Lavergne, C., Abrahamsen, E. P., Meijers, A. J. S., Meredith, M. P., M. P., Zhou, S., . . . Haumann, F. A., . . . Lee, W. S. (2023). Observing Antarctic bottom water in the Southern Ocean. Frontiers in Marine Science, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1221701