Katsumi Matsumoto, Geological Survey of Japan, Agency of Industrial
Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan
Jorge L. Sarmiento, Robert M. Key, and Rick Slater, Program in
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New
Jersey, USA
Olivier Aumont, Jean-Claude Dutay, Patrick Monfray, and James C. Orr,
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
Ken Caldeira, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore,
California, USA
Jean-Michel Campin and Anne Mouchet, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium
Scott C. Doney, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole,
Massachusetts, USA
Helge Drange and Yongqi Gao, Nansen Environmental 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
Anand Gnanadesikan, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory,
Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Nicolas Gruber and Gian-Kasper Plattner, Institute of Geophysics
and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles,
California, USA
Akio Ishida and Yasuhiro Yamanaka, Frontier Research System for
Global Change, Yokohama, Japan
Fortunat Joos, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute,
University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Keith Lindsay, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder,
Colorado, USA
Ernst Maier-Reimer, Max Planck Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg,
Germany
Richard J. Matear, CSIRO Division of Marine Research, Hobart,
Tasmania, Australia
Ray Najjar, Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Reiner Schlitzer and Marie-France Weirig, Alfred Wegener Institute for
Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
P. S. Swathi, CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modeling and Computer
Simulation, Bangalore, India
Ian J. Totterdell and Andrea Yool, Southampton Oceanography Centre,
Southampton, UK
New radiocarbon and chlorofluorocarbon-11 data from the World Ocean Circulation Experiment are used to assess a suite of 19 ocean carbon cycle models. We use the distributions and inventories of these tracers as quantitative metrics of model skill and find that only about a quarter of the suite is consistent with the new data-based metrics. This should serve as a warning bell to the larger community that not all is well with current generation of ocean carbon cycle models. At the same time, this highlights the danger in simply using the available models to represent the state-of-the-art modeling without considering the credibility of each model.