Propagation of regional dye tracers in three models of ocean transport over 6000 years

This dataset comprises three NetCDF files, one for each of three models of global ocean transport: a 1º global configuration of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO), a recent 2º solution of the Ocean Circulation Inverse Model (OCIM), and a 2º solution of the Total Matrix Intercomparison (TMI).
Each file contains the transient evolution over 6000 years of six regional dye tracers. The dye tracers are restored to 1 at the surface in their source region, and to zero elsewhere at the surface. In the ocean interior they propagate as passive and conservative tracers. The six source regions are Antarctic marginal seas (AA), high southern latitudes (HS), mid southern latitudes (MS), low latitudes (LL), northern North Pacific (NP) and northern North Atlantic and Arctic (NA). The source regions can be identified from surface distributions of the dye tracers in each file.
The dye tracers propagate in steady stratification (except for seasonality in NEMO). Each file contains the global distributions of temperature and salinity used in each model. Basic information about the grid of each model is also provided.
Specifically, the three NetCDF files contain:
- Three variables describing the spatial grid: ‘xt’ is longitude (in degrees), ‘yt’ is latitude (in degrees) and ‘zt’ is depth (in meters).
- One variable called ‘years’ representing the time elapsed in years. 
- Two variables called ‘grid_cell_area’ and ‘grid_cell_volume’ representing the horizontal area  (in square meters) and volume (in cubic meters) of each grid cell, respectively.  
- Six variables called ‘dyeXX’, where XX stands for one of the six surface regions. These variables are unit-less dye tracer concentrations.
- Two variables for global distributions of temperature and salinity. For TMI and OCIM, we provide the annual mean potential temperature and practical salinity. For NEMO we provide monthly means of conservative temperature and preformed salinity.
More detailed documentation of the models and tracers can be found in the following publication:
Millet, B., de Lavergne, C., Gray, W.R., Ethé, C., Madec, G., Holzer, M., DeVries, T., Gebbie, G., Roche, D. Global ocean ventilation: a comparison between a general circulation model and data-constrained inverse models. ESS open archive (2024). https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.173532470.03609119/v1