Prof. Dr. Gert-Jan Reichart

I study fossils of plankton in the ocean floor. Their tiny calcareous skeletons tell us a lot about the living conditions of the past. For example, how warm and how salty the water was. And about the amount of greenhouse gases: the more carbon dioxide in the water, the more difficult it is for plankton to form calcium skeletons. Knowledge about the climate in the past therefore helps us to predict the consequences of climate change in our own time. Moreover, the vast majority of carbon dioxide is not in the air, but in the oceans. Sooner or later, we will have to look at the oceans to find a solution for the climate crisis.