CP Climate of the Past CP Clim. Past 1814-9332 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/cp-4-125-2008 Modeling variations of marine reservoir ages during the last 45 000 years Franke J. 1 Paul A. 2 1 Schulz M. 1 2 Department of Geosciences, University of Bremen, Germany MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany 25 06 2008 4 2 125 136 Copyright: © 2008 J. Franke et al. 2008 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/4/125/2008/cp-4-125-2008.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/4/125/2008/cp-4-125-2008.pdf

When dating marine samples with <sup>14</sup>C, the reservoir-age effect is usually assumed to be constant, although atmospheric <sup>14</sup>C production rate and ocean circulation changes cause temporal and spatial reservoir-age variations. These lead to dating errors, which can limit the interpretation of cause and effect in paleoclimate data. We used a global ocean circulation model forced by transient atmospheric &Delta;<sup>14</sup>C variations to calculate reservoir ages for the last 45 000 years for a present day-like and a last glacial maximum-like ocean circulation. A ~30% reduced Atlantic meridonal overturning circulation leads to increased reservoir ages by up to ~500 years in high latitudes. Temporal variations are proportional to the absolute value of the reservoir age; regions with large reservoir age also show large variation. Temporal variations range between ~300 years in parts of the subtropics and ~1000 years in the Southern Ocean. For tropical regions, which are generally assumed to have nearly stable reservoir ages, the model suggests variations of several hundred years.

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