Understanding the causes and consequences of past marine carbon cycling variability through models

Here we provide a comprehensive overview of how marine carbon cycling and the biological carbon pump is treated in available paleoclimate models, with the aim of critically evaluating their ability to help interpret past marine carbon cycle and climate dynamics. To this end, we first provide an overview of commonly used paleoclimate models and some of their associated paleo-applications, drawing from a wide range of global carbon cycle box models and Earth system Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs). Secondly, we review and evaluate the three dominant processes involved in the cycling of organic and inorganic carbon in the marine system and how they are represented in models, namely: biological productivity at the ocean surface, remineralisation/dissolution of particulate carbon within the water column, and the benthic-pelagic coupling at the seafloor. We generate and employ illustrative examples using the model GENIE to show how different parameterisations of water-column and sediment processes can lead to significantly different model projections. Our compilation reveals the prevalence of static parameterisations of marine carbon cycling among existing paleoclimate models, which are commonly empirically derived from present-day observations. Although such approaches tend to represent carbon transfer in the modern ocean well, they are potentially compromised in their ability to reflect the true degree of freedom and strength of feedbacks with respect to past climate events, particularly those characterised by environmental boundary conditions that differ fundamentally from today. Finally, we discuss the importance of using models of different complexities and how questions of model uncertainty may start to be addressed.