README

This directory contains climate model output data for 36 different Early Cretaceous (Aptian/Albian) simulations performed with the Kiel Climate Model (KCM; ECHAM5/NEMO). Each zip file contains climatological mean values (monthly mean for the atmosphere; annual mean for the ocean) averaged over the last 100 model years of each simulation in netCDF format. A detailed description of the model setup, boundary conditions and integration strategy is given in the associated publication ("Controls on Early Cretaceous South Atlantic Ocean circulation and carbon burial – a climate model-proxy synthesis" in Climate of the Past; https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2732). Differences in the paleogeographies are limited to the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean regions, but the output is available globally.

Available Models

Table 1: Overview of available model simulations sorted by the four main boundary condition differences discussed in the associated paper:

Available Variables

Each model zip file contains a means directory with the climatological mean output files for the atmosphere and ocean.

Atmosphere

Files starting with <Model ID>_mm_* contain the monthly mean climatologies of 2D atmosphere variables. Each file represent a single variable for the following list of variables:

Table 2: Overview of available atmospheric variables. See the individual file metadata for further information.

Ocean

Ocean variables are split across 4 individual files following the staggered grid of the NEMO ocean model. Naming structure follows <Model ID>.mean_grid_{T|U|V|W}.nc

Table 3: Overview of available ocean variables on the T-grid. See the individual file metadata for further information.

Table 4: Overview of available ocean variables on the U-grid. See the individual file metadata for further information.

Table 5: Overview of available ocean variables on the V-grid. See the individual file metadata for further information.

Table 6: Overview of available ocean variables on the W-grid. See the individual file metadata for further information.

Publication: Steinig, S., Dummann, W., Hofmann, P., Frank, M., Park, W., Wagner, T., and Flögel, S.: Controls on Early Cretaceous South Atlantic Ocean circulation and carbon burial – a climate model-proxy synthesis, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2732, 2023.

Source: This dataset is available via Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11386835.

Authors: Steinig, S., Dummann, W., Hofmann, P., Frank, M., Park, W., Wagner, T., and Flögel, S.

License: This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 .