Jean-Claude Dutay, James C. Orr, and Patrick Monfray, Laboratoire des
Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Unite Mixte de Recherche
CEA-CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
John L. Bullister, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, Washington, USA
Scott C. Doney, Keith Lindsay, and Matthew W. Hecht, National Center
for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Ray Najjar, Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Ken Caldeira, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore,
California, USA
Jean-Michel Campin, Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics,
University of Liege, Belgium
Helge Drange and Yongqi Gao, Nansen Enviromental and Remote Sensing
Center, Bergen, Norway
Mick Follows and John C. Marshall, Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and
Climate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA
Nicolas Gruber, Jorge Sarmiento, and Rick Slater, Program in
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New
Jersey, USA
Akio Ishida and Yasuhiro Yamanaka, Institute for Global Change
Research, Tokyo, Japan
Fortunat Joos and Gian-Kasper Plattner, Climate and Environmental
Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Gurvan Madec, Laboratoire d'Oceanographie Dynamique et de
Climatologie, Paris, France
Ernst Maier-Reimer, Max Planck Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg,
Germany
Richard J. Matear, CSIRO Division of Marine Research, Hobart,
Tasmania, Australia
Reiner Schlitzer and Marie-France Weirig, Alfred Wegener Institute for
Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
Ian J. Totterdell and Andrew Yool, Southampton Oceanography Centre,
Southampton, UK
We compared the 13 models participating in the Ocean Carbon Model Intercomparaison Project (OCMIP) with regards to their skill in matching observed distributions of CFC-11. This analysis charactarize the abilities of these models to ventilate the ocean on time scales relevant for anthropogenic CO2 uptake. Large range in the modeled global inventory (+-30%) are largely due to differences in ventilation from the high latitudes. In the southern ocean, models differ particularly in the longitudinal distribution of the CFC uptake in the intermediate water, while the latidudinal distribution is mainly controlled by the subgrid-scale parameterization. More realistic intermediate water ventilation was found in all the models that use isopycnal diffusion and eddy induced velocity parametrization. Deep and bottom water ventilation also varies substantially between the models. Models coupled to a sea-ice model systematically provide more realistic AABW formation source region; however these same models also largely overestimate AABW ventilation if no specific parametrization of brine rejection during sea-ice formation is included. All models exhibit a systematic large underestimation of the CFC uptake in the thermocline of the Pacific subtropical gyre.