Research from Jena joins an international 18-month arctic mission.
More than 130 years ago, the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen deliberately allowed his ship Fram to become trapped in Arctic sea ice, hoping to drift with the ice toward the North Pole. His expedition became a milestone in the history of polar exploration. Today, the international research platform Tara Polar Station, operated by the Tara Ocean Foundation, builds on the same principle—not to discover new routes, but to answer one of the most pressing questions of our time: How is climate change reshaping life in the Arctic? With the departure of Tara Polar Station from Lorient, France, on 19 July 2026, one of the most extraordinary scientific programmes of our time begins. Over the coming winter, twelve crew members will drift with the frozen platform through the Central Arctic Ocean ice, spending months under extreme conditions collecting water, snow, ice, and atmospheric samples. The University of Jena is among the participating institutions: researchers led by Prof. Dr Georg Pohnert will contribute their expertise to uncover how climate change is affecting microbial life in the Arctic Ocean.
The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than almost any other region on Earth. Yet little is known about how these rapid environmental changes influence the microbial communities that form the foundation of Arctic ecosystems. This is precisely where the international Tara Polaris I (2026-2027) expetition comes in. Together with more than 30 research institutions from twelve countries, scientists will investigate fundamental processes in the Central Arctic Ocean over the two coming decades – from biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles to the impacts of climate change and contaminants on microbial communities.
Prof. Dr Georg Pohnert, Professor of Bioanalytics and Principal Investigator in the Cluster of Excellence »Balance of the Microverse« at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, contributes his long-standing expertise in the chemical ecology of marine microorganisms to the international research consortium. Together with his team, he is developing scientific research questions for the Tara Polaris I expedition and will analyse the samples collected during the expedition in collaboration with international partners.
»If we want to understand how the warming of the polar ocean will affect the functioning of the entire Arctic ecosystem, we need to investigate how microorganisms at the very base of the food web respond to these extreme environmental changes. Tara Polar Station enables research in an undisturbed natural environment that has not been possible from conventional research vessels,« says Prof. Dr Georg Pohnert. »Because the station operates with almost no emissions, it causes minimal disturbance to this highly sensitive habitat. This allows us to observe the natural interactions between organisms and gain an entirely new picture of the Arctic.«
Tiny Organisms with Global Importance
They are invisible to the naked eye, yet indispensable for life on Earth: microalgae produce around half of the world’s oxygen, form the basis of marine food webs, and drive essential biogeochemical cycles. Georg Pohnert’s research group focuses particularly on how microalgae communicate with bacteria and adapt to extreme environmental conditions such as months of darkness and freezing temperatures.
Previous expeditions by Georg Pohnert’s research group have already revealed important insights into previously unknown metabolic products of marine microalgae and their role in the global sulphur cycle. Tara Polar Station, a one-of-kind drifting laboratory-observatory, now offers, for the first time, the opportunity to observe these processes directly throughout an extended Arctic ice drift.
The onboard refrigerators will fill with water samples, ice cores, and microbial specimens. Once Tara Polaris I expedition (2026-2027) returns to Europe, laboratory work will begin for numerous research teams, including those in Jena. These unique samples will be analysed for many years, helping scientists to better predict how climate change will affect marine ecosystems and the global processes they sustain.
A Research Laboratory-Observatory Drifting Through the Ice
Tara Polar Station, which is part of the scientific fleet of the Tara Ocean Foundation, a French pioneering nonprofit organization dedicated to ocean conservation, has been designed as a permanently drifting research laboratory and observatory. Unlike conventional research vessels, it is intentionally frozen into the sea ice and drifts for many months with the natural movement of the ice across the central Arctic Ocean. The Tara Polaris research programme (2026-2046), planned to run for approximately 20 years, aims to generate long-term observational data across seasons that have so far been largely unavailable.
The participation of Friedrich Schiller University Jena highlights the international visibility of its microbiological and chemical ecology research. At the same time, the project complements the scientific goals of the Cluster of Excellence »Balance of the Microverse«, which investigates how microbial communities shape ecosystems and respond to environmental change.