<span>The parameterisation of biogeochemical models, when simulated within global ocean models, poses many challenges, among them those related to the calibration of rate constants (parameters) to the different functional groups.&nbsp;</span><span>Global coupled general circulation models are computationally expensive to run, which limits the number of experiments and increases the risk of issues such as unrealistic tracer distributions. </span><span>Efficient "surrogate'' circulations and methods to accelerate the spin up of global models have now become available, and provide the possibility to simulate a biogeochemical model globally with only moderate computational resources. &nbsp;</span><span>When coupled to an optimisation algorithm these surrogate models even allow the calibration of model parameters against observations in a coherent and systematic way.&nbsp;</span><span>We here investigate whether biogeochemical model parameters, that were objectively calibrated (optimised) in an efficient surrogate circulation against a wide range of observations, can be transferred to the same biogeochemical model embedded in an Earth system model (ESM), without loosing too much of the model's improvement through optimisation. </span><span>Comparison of biogeochemical results obtained from two circulation model environments shows that insolation as well as circulation can play a role especially for simulated primary production, and, regionally, surface concentrations such as chlorophyll; however, comparison to an earlier biogeochemical setup of the ESM shows that biogeochemical model parameters play an even larger role on certain biogeochemical processes.&nbsp;</span><span>Export production is mainly affected by circulation, in line with earlier model studies.&nbsp;</span><span>Deep particle flux is, however, mostly affected by the biogeochemical model parameters, especially the particle flux length scale. </span><span>Given the relatively large role of biogeochemical model parameters, their optimisation in a surrogate circulation and subsequent transfer to the ESM leads to an improved performance of the ESM. </span><span>This suggests that prior calibration of parameters in "light-weight'' circulations can support model development, before performing computationally expensive simulations with ESMs. </span><span>Model improvement with respect to organic matter, for which only sparse observations exist, becomes most visible when applying non-parametric metrics, that avoid interferences from data patchiness and episodic events. </span><span>These metrics, which also allow for a clearer distinction between the performance of different biogeochemical models, merit further exploitation with regard to model assessment and calibration.</span>