The Working Group on Glaciology at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, has been awarded this year’s “Communicator Award - Science Award of the Donors' Association”. The prize has been awarded to the group of 15 polar and marine researchers working with Professor Heinz Miller, a geophysicist, in recognition of the excellent way in which they have communicated their research on climate change to the general public. The group is the first team of scientists to win the Communicator Award, which is being conferred for the eighth time this year.
The Communicator Award is Germany’s highest distinction for the communication of research findings to the general public. It has been awarded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) and the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany since 2000 to scientists and researchers who have communicated their research findings to the general public in a particularly varied, original or creative manner and who have rendered outstanding services to the increasingly important dialogue between the scientific community and the public. The seven winners of the award to date have included mathematician Albrecht Beutelspacher, experimental physicist Wolfgang Heckl, Catholic theologian Hubert Wolf, and last year’s award went to paleobiologist Friedemann Schrenk, who also conducts research on Africa. The winners are selected by an award panel consisting of science journalists and communications and PR experts. This year they received 27 nominations from all scientific disciplines. Seven of the nominees made the shortlist, but in the end the panel selected the Working Group on Glaciology unanimously.
The team of glaciologists from Bremerhaven is the first to win the Communicator Award. They have been seeking answers to what has become one of the most urgent issues for mankind – the development and change to our climate – in the eternal ice for two decades already. The 15 geophysicists, geologists, geographers and meteorologists in the working group have been taking deep ice cores from the Arctic and Antarctic ice on numerous national and international expeditions. From these ice cores they can obtain deep insights, enabling them to reconstruct the earth’s climate over the past millennia. In 2003 they took the deepest ice cores to date from the Antarctic plateau, estimated to provide ice core climate data extending back 900,000 years, as part of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA). From the air that is trapped in these ice cores they have been able to obtain the most detailed data to date on the presence and changes in the two main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide and methane. The team has also been involved in deep core drilling projects in Greenland, by the German Climate Research Programme (DEKLIM) and the “Klima in historischer Zeit” (The Climate in Historical Time) programme, which aims to reconstruct the climate over the past millennium. The team is also making a very significant contribution to addressing the increasingly urgent question of how the climate will develop in the future. Over the past few years they have developed a number of models and scenarios, the majority of which deal with the melting of the polar ice caps and the potential consequences for changes in sea levels.
The team from Bremerhaven has presented this research and other research findings to the general public with great dedication and creativity from the outset. They have combined the science with the attraction of the eternal ice in a fascinating way, not only in numerous publications of their own in books and journals, but also at exhibitions and lectures at schools, universities and other public education institutions. The researchers also invited the press to attend their events in order to get a first-hand impression of the work that goes on in the ice lab or on polar expedition ships. The articles published in the newspapers and broadcast on radio and television helped raise public awareness of climate research. The polar and marine researchers also discovered and made use of the internet as a way of reaching a broad audience with their findings and also used DVDs and other new media – even in the field of art with their aesthetic and high-tech video installations, which they used to spread the word. The glaciologists have been in great demand, both amongst politicians and business leaders as well as interested lay-people, for discussion and as a source of information on all issues relating to climate change.
Both their research work and their public communication of the research findings have been a genuine team effort by the researchers from Bremerhaven. The geophysicist Professor Heinz Miller, acting director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, has played a major part in this. The distribution of tasks he and his staff have implemented was also found to be exemplary by the award panel for the Communicator Award, which was one of the main reasons why it chose a research team rather than an individual researcher as the winner of the award for the first time. The award panel also paid tribute to the objective and sophisticated way in which the working group communicates its research findings. This is based – in the award panel’s opinion – both on the high scientific standards adhered to by the group as well as its many years of experience in public relations.
The Communicator Award will be presented on 14 June during this year's “Summer of Science” in Essen. The presidents of the DFG and the Donors' Association, Professor Matthias Kleiner and Dr. Arend Oetker, will present the award at Zollverein, a historic former coal-mine in Essen. The prize money is donated by the Donors' Association, which has a membership of more than 3,000 companies and private individuals and which promotes interaction and discussion between the scientific community and the general public. In addition to the prize money, the glaciologists will also be presented with a hologram representing the Communicator Award. The hologram, created by the Cologne artist Michael Bleyenberg, underlines the significance of transparency in science and expresses the importance of looking at things “in the right light”. Just like the hologram, it is only then that science can truly shine.
Further information about the winners of the award can be found at www.dfg.de.
For further information:
Prof. Dr. Heinrich Miller
heinrich.miller@awi.de
Tel.: +49 471 4831-1210
Margarete Pauls
Press and Public Relations
margarete.pauls@awi.de
Tel.: +49 471 4831-1180