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Radiocarbon as a diagnostic tracer in ocean and carbon cycle modeling
Author(s) -
Guilderson Thomas P.,
Caldeira Kenneth,
Duffy Philip B.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
global biogeochemical cycles
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.512
H-Index - 187
eISSN - 1944-9224
pISSN - 0886-6236
DOI - 10.1029/1999gb001192
Subject(s) - radiocarbon dating , ocean current , ocean general circulation model , carbon cycle , environmental science , tracer , climatology , oceanography , ocean dynamics , downwelling , ocean heat content , climate model , thermohaline circulation , geology , atmospheric sciences , general circulation model , climate change , upwelling , paleontology , ecology , physics , ecosystem , nuclear physics , biology
Models which are used to study the evolution of oceanic anthropogenic CO 2 uptake in a warmer climate need to be adequately tested before their results are used to influence science and national policy, let alone predict future regional climate. In order to study circulation and the redistribution of carbon in the ocean, we have simulated the uptake and redistribution of bomb radiocarbon in a state of the art ocean general circulation model. The model does reasonably well in simulating the gross surface prebomb distribution of radiocarbon as well as some of the finer details resolved during Geochemical Ocean Section Study and World Ocean Circulation Experiment observations. In areas of downwelling the simulated surface‐ocean bomb 14 C maxima occur too early with too much amplitude. This indicates inadequate vertical mixing and coupling between the wind driven and deeper regions of the ocean with a piling up of radiocarbon and CO 2 in the upper ocean. This inadequacy will hamper efforts to predict ocean CO 2 uptake on decadal to centennial timescales, the equivalent ventilation time of the respective water masses. These results are not specific to our model and indicate a systemic problem in many ocean models.