Carles Pelejero

Carles Pelejero

Institut de Ciències del Mar

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Born in Barcelona in 1968, Carles Pelejero graduated in Chemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1991, with a specialty in Organic Chemistry. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona in 2000, doing research in the fields of paleoceanography and paleoclimatology through the study of molecular biomarkers in deep sea sediments. He then spent four years of postdoctoral research in Australia, at the Australian National University and Geoscience Australia. There, he developed new methodologies for the elemental and isotopic analysis of marine biogenic carbonates using MC-ICPMS and TIMS. In 2005 he moved to the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), in Barcelona, with a "Ramón y Cajal" contract. In October 2006 he was appointed ICREA Research Professor.

Research interests

I am interested in understanding and quantifying how the marine environment and climate are changing today, in which ways they have changed in the past, and how will they influence marine organisms and ecosystems in the future. To this end, I analyse deep sea sediments and corals as archives of changes in the past, use systems to monitor the present, and run manipulative experiments in aquaria to simulate the future. A main environmental issue that I am currently studying is the progressive acidification of the oceans that is occurring due to the marine absorption of part of the CO2 that humans are emitting to the atmosphere. I am also setting up culture-based systems to calibrate paleoceanographic proxies in corals, making use of the aquaria facilities at the ICM.

Selected publications

- Kapsenberg L, Bitter MC, Miglioli A, Aparicio-Estalella C, Pelejero C, Gattuso J-P & Dumollard R 2022, 'Molecular basis of ocean acidification sensitivity and adaptation in Mytilus galloprovincialis', iScience, 25(8), 104677.

- Sala MM, Peters F, Sebastián M, Cardelús C, Calvo E, Marrasé C, Massana R, Pelejero C, Sala-Colomina J, Vaqué D & Gasol JM 2022, 'COVID-19 lockdown moderately increased oligotrophy at a marine coastal site', Science of The Total Environment, 812, 151443.

- Pelejero C, Figuerola B & Calvo E 2022, 'Ocean acidification: trends, effects and what we have left to learn', in JL Pelegrí, J-M Gili & MV Martínez de Albéniz, eds, The ocean we want: inclusive and transformative ocean science. Institut de Ciències del Mar, CSIC, Barcelona, pp 158-160.

- Calvo E & Pelejero C 2022, 'Reconstructing the climate of the past to understand the climate of today and tomorrow', in JL Pelegrí, J-M Gili & MV Martínez de Albéniz, eds, The ocean we want: inclusive and transformative ocean science. Institut de Ciències del Mar, CSIC, Barcelona, pp 164-165.

Selected research activities

- PI of the MICINN Project ESCACS: Elucidating the Southern Ocean Control of Atmospheric CO2 using a Selection of paleo-archives and proxies and co-PI of the MICINN Project HICCUP: Human-Induced Changes Compromising the open ocean. Generating Understanding from Paleoceanography.

- Supervisor of the MICINN Postdoctoral International Collaboration Project to Aurora M. Ricart on the role of sea forests in shaping the response of coastal calcifying organisms to past, present and future global change.

- Supervisor of the MICINN Severo Ochoa Postdoctoral Project to Maribel García-Ibáñez on Mediterranean Sea natural alkalinisation: a mitigator for ocean acidification?

- Coordinator of the Research Group on Marine Biogeochemistry and Global Change, Generalitat de Catalunya.

- Reviewer of the First Order Draft of the Synthesis Report of the IPCC 6th Assessment Report.

- Invited plenary conference at COSMETORIUM, Barcelona.