About

Drift+Noise GmbH was incorporated in 2014 as a spin-off company of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Its founders look back on more than 25 years of operational experience in polar regions. Drift+Noise has established itself as a reliable and valued distributor of sea ice information data.

Drift+Noise is fully committed to assisting stakeholders acting in polar waters with operational ice information from models and satellites, by leveraging technology from polar research, geophysics, and remote sensing.

Its flagship service IcySea provides timely sea ice information for various applications in the polar regions, which help operators reduce their costs and risks, in a Polar Code compliant way.

Users of our services include icebreakers like RV Polarstern (the German national icebreaker operated by the AWI) and RSV Nuyina (chartered by the Australian Antarctic Division), expedition cruise companies such as Ponant, Hapag Lloyd Cruises, and Lindblad as well as Marine Technology and Engineering Organisations like the Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA) and BigLift.

Video Portraits of Drift+Noise Polar Services

Portrait by the Copernicus Marine Service (2019)

Bremen's Buten un Binnen accompanied our team while we were supporting the research icebreaker Polarstern in Antarctica. (in German, December 2018)

The team members are:

Dr. Lasse Rabenstein

Lasse Rabenstein

Business Development and Consulting

Lasse holds a PhD in geophysics and is founder of the first generation. He takes care of the sustainable growth of the company and consults polar expeditions on-site and remotely.

H. Jakob Bünger

H. Jakob Bünger

Research and Operational Field Support

Jakob holds a PhD in physics with a focus on sea ice. He coordinates research and consults clients in the field.

Bernhard Schmitz

Bernhard Schmitz

Software Development

Bernhard is a geophysicist and professional software engineer. He is the driving force behind the IcySea progressive web application.

Henning Weidenhöfer

Henning Weidenhöfer

Software Development

Henning recently joined our IcySea development team. He has two decades of experience in developing web applications and digital solutions.

Jonathan Bahlmann

Jonathan Bahlmann

Software Engineering

Jonathan studied geoinformatics and joined our team as a software engineer. He is focused on improving our remote sensing-based sea-ice information products.

Taib Hayat

Taib Hayat

Development and Operations

Taib is a geographer and a web developer. At Drift+Noise he focuses mainly on backend programming and devops processes.

Josh Dawson

Josh Dawson

Development and Operations

Josh is a distributed systems engineer. He works on devops processes to scale our computing infrastructure and ensures reliability of IcySea.

Advisory board members are:

Dr. Panagiotis Kountouris

Panagiotis Kountouris

Scientist at ECMWF

Panagiotis is one of our co-founders and is currently employed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. His expertise includes remote sensing, model data processing, and scientific software development.

Matthias Verbeke

Matthias Verbeke

Entrepreneur

Matthias is one of our co-founders. He serves on the board of directors of Open Analytics and assists Drift+Noise in strategic planning and legal and regulatory matters.

Bjørn Kay

Bjørn Kay

Master Mariner and Ice Advisor

Bjørn is employed by the Svendborg International Maritime Academy and is a master mariner, ice instructor, ice advisor, and member of the International Ice Charting Group Task Team 8.