7 Apps & Multimedia

Be it floods, forest fires or droughts – the effects of climate change are already being felt today. The latest IPCC report talks plain language, too: We only have a limited CO2 budget and must act quickly and effectively if we want to limit climate change to a tolerable level. What the CO2 budget is and what it means is explained in this multimedia web story produced by UFZ, AWI and Helmholtz Climate Initiative, which was produced immediately after publication of the 6th IPCC report on the physical science basis.

About 305 days a year the German research icebreaker Polarstern spends in the Arctic and Antarctic. Where exactly is the ship right now? How cold might it be there? What’s on the research agenda? This progressive web app shows position of Polarstern and local weather data around the ship in real time. Current photos and reports make life and research on board tangible. The website works both as an app on mobile devices and via internet browser.

Historical data and geological archives show that passing plasma clouds of high-energy particles such as protons, electrons and atoms can be much stronger than we have experienced on Earth in recent decades. The question is not if but when a very strong magnetic storm will hit us at some point. If you want to know what this means for us as a high-tech society – our web story provides some of the answers.

Increasing climate change is causing the Earth’s permafrost to thaw deeper and longer. Drone images can document the changes in permafrost throughout the Arctic. With our “UndercoverEisAgenten” app, citizens are helping researchers to analyse these images.

The German butterfly monitoring programme was launched in spring 2005. Year after year, volunteers record all diurnal butterflies during weekly inspections along defined routes (transects). Starting with the counting season of 2024, a new app was published containing a species catalogue with profiles of all native butterflies and damselflies. It also includes the option of having diurnal butterflies identified from photos with the help of artificial intelligence.