Narrowing the uncertainty for deep-ocean injection efficiency

Publisher Summary The chapter proposes a basic ground rule for future studies of ocean injection efficiency: to be credible they must also demonstrate the associated model's skill in simulating the global inventory of GFG-11 and the global mean for radiocarbon in the deep ocean. A model that performs well in regards to both those constraints will be more likely to simulate reasonable global injection efficiencies. Nonetheless, efficiencies for a given injection site in coarse resolution models could be biased. For instance, the majority of injection sites will be located on eastern or western boundaries, which have known problems in coarse resolution models. Furthermore, coarse-resolution grids are unable to resolve important subgrid-scale processes (e.g., eddies, boundary currents, convection). Properly accounting for these processes may affect large-scale transport and could alter model predictions of CO2 sequestration efficiency. Although, global-scale ocean general circulation models are now becoming available which do resolve these processes, their high resolution means that they can only be integrated for relatively short periods, a few decades at most