C01_01

Prospects and limitations of marine radiocarbon simulations in (paleo) climate studies

Butzin M¹, Köhler P², Lohmann G^1,2

¹MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, ²Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research , Bremerhaven, Germany

On the timescale of hundreds to thousands of years, the oceans play a key role in the climate system by exchanging momentum, energy, freshwater, and carbon dioxide with the atmosphere. The oceans are also the biggest sink of radiocarbon. Observations of recently dissolved marine radiocarbon have provided, and still are, a benchmark for assessing ocean circulation models, which are an essential ingredient of climate models nowadays. Marine radiocarbon records from older times have been used not only as a dating tool, but also to infer past states of ocean overturning and ocean ventilation. However, these records are sparse, scattered and discontinuous, and their interpretation in terms of past climate change is not straightforward. Numerical simulations could help, but radiocarbon-equipped models often use simplified approaches or setups to keep the computational costs low. In our presentation, we will revisit some of these potential issues and discuss recent developments in ocean-climate-radiocarbon modeling.