Sea-ice leads play a key role in the climate system by facilitating heat and moisture exchanges between the ocean and atmosphere, as well as by providing essential habitats for marine life. This study presents new insights from a gap-filled monthly dataset on sea-ice leads in the Southern Ocean and a first comprehensive analysis of spatial patterns, seasonal variability, and long-term trends of wintertime (April to September) sea-ice leads over a 21-year period (2003–2023). Our findings reveal that leads are ubiquitous in the Southern Ocean and show distinct spatial patterns with maximum lead frequencies close to the coastline, over the shelf break, and close to seafloor ridges and peaks. We see a strong seasonal variability in lead occurrence, with lead frequencies peaking in mid-winter. Weak but significant trends in lead frequencies are shown for the presented period for individual regions and months. Rather small changes in lead occurrence over the 21 years suggest stable wintertime sea-ice compactness despite the observed strong fluctuations and recent anomalies in sea-ice extent. Expanding upon previous work of lead detection in Antarctic sea ice, this study provides first results on the long-term regional, seasonal, and inter-annual variability of sea-ice leads in the Southern Ocean and can thereby contribute to an improved understanding of air–sea-ice–ocean interactions in the climate system. It also underscores the need for further investigation into the individual contributions of atmospheric and oceanic drivers to sea-ice lead formation in the Antarctic.

This article interprets Novalis' expression of spirit (Geist) across his oeuvre, ranging from his early work "On Inspiration" to his major novels "The Novices of Sais" and "Heinrich von Ofterdingen". His view of the world is based on the Christian dichotomy between "the spirit and the letter" (,,Geist und Buchstabe") and in his works he considers how we might once again achieve the spirit of nature through human written language. However, even the act of inspiration is for him not a total exchange with the spirit of nature, because it is also a moment of producing artwork, and therefore a moment of division between the human and nature. He therefore attempts to reproduce the ideal unity between nature and the human through the representation of atmosphere, which is composed of harmony between several voices in the world as well as various dimensions of times and spaces. This article interprets the above representation as a poetic experiment that seeks to express the spirit through an internally diverse written language, in other words, as an attempt to describe unity as a plurality.

Johannes Kepler's thinking represents a central turning point in the development of the modern understanding of atmosphere. Kepler takes up the ancient conception of the cosmos as a whole divided into living and animated spheres, but reshapes it using specifically modern scientific and epistemological approaches. This gives rise to a view of the Earth as an animated organism, which prefigures modern concepts of atmosphere against the background of a comprehensive vitality of nature. Furthermore, Kepler's embedding of his reflections in the context of astrological prognostics enriches the modern aesthetic discussion with a remarkable perspective: prognostic, i.e. temporal, perception of atmosphere.

The carbuncle as a Christological symbol of atmosphere in Nicholas of Cusa - with reference to the late antique and medieval gemstone allegory. In his De non aliud, Nicholas of Cusa applies the carbuncle as a Christological aenigma, which can be understood as an exemplary object of atmosphere due to its dual nature of light substance and mineral substance. The article will show that the meaning of the carbuncle image as the epistemological method is so closely linked to the character and form of thought in De non alud that an examination of the meaning of the carbuncle in its historical allegory contributes to the question of image theory in Cusanus. By that the question is answered to which extent this far-reaching meaning of the carbuncle can shed light on the anagogic dimension of the perception of atmosphere.

The article discusses “SimStab” [Simulator of Stability], a poetic performance by a young Russian poet, Rostislav Amelin, as an effective hybrid of the innovative poetry, video game, and the cyberpunk genre models. The interaction of these components produces strong, yet not necessarily obvious political over-tones, testing the limits of the audience’s (or readers’, or players’) agency. Like many other cyberpunk texts, “SimStab” explores the conflict between the desire to resist colonization by the pervasive powers dominating contemporary society, and the absolute necessity of willingly colonizing your own body and subjectivity with the products of these powers. Both the poem, game and their shared text embody spaces of utopia reliant on repressed sites of formless abjection, which paradoxically become a source of anarchic freedom. Thus, in “SimStab” the ludic algorithmic with its procedural rhetoric (Ian Bogost) creates spaces of formlessness which repeats the liberatory promise of cyberpunk literature.