We study the temporal evolution of concentrations of the chlorofluorocarbons CFC 11 and CFC 12 in the ocean, under the assumption of circulation and mixing being invariant in time. This allows us to define a time-invariant age distribution for a given point in the ocean, where the age is defined as time since the last contact with the atmosphere occurred. This concept is evaluated for a number of fundamental situations. We deduce a tendency for low CFC 11 and CFC 12 concentrations in advective regimes to increase exponentially in time and for concentrations near to a solubility equilibrium with atmospheric concentrations to increase rather more linearly. The apparent saturations, i.e., the ratios of interior to mixed-layer CFC concentrations, increase monotonically in time, typical rates being 5--10% per decade. The theoretical results are compatible with time trends found in repeated CFC observations in the ocean. Diagrams on the temporal evolution for different age distributions are presented for the period 1970--2000, which can serve as a general orientation. The diagrams furthermore can provide time corrections for quasi-synoptic evaluation of CFC observations taken over an extended period of time and assist in constructing time-dependent CFC boundary conditions for numerical models of ocean circulation. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996