Marcel van der Meer

I mainly study the salt content, salinity, in seas and oceans in the past to better understand future climate developments. Salt can help us to reconstruct ocean circulations in the past. The large global ocean circulation distributes heat across the earth. If the ice caps melt as a result of global warming causing the uppermost water layer of the North Atlantic Ocean to become less saline, then that could slow the warm Gulf Stream. This could potentially lead to colder conditions in Western Europe. I conduct my work primarily by measuring deuterium, a rare form of hydrogen, in molecular fossils of algae.