RossSea_nutrients.nc is a netCDF file containing monthly gridded climatologies of nitrate, silicate and chlorophyll for an area around the Ross Sea for the months of November, December, January and February. Details on how the climatologies where created can be found in Smith et al., 2003. The climatologies are gridded on the same one degree horizontal grid as the World Ocean Atlas 2001 (WOA01) and cover the area, Longitude: 155.5E - 220.5E, Latitude: 79.5S - 59.5S. They are on the same 33 vertical depth levels as the WOA01 and use the same land mask.

The defined variables are:

• 'X' - grid latitude
• 'Y' - grid longitude
• 'Z' - grid depth values (m)
• 'T' - time (months). Four values: 10.5, 11.5, 0.5, 1.5
• 'silicate' - Gridded silicate array (micromole/liter). 4-d grid (X,Y,Z,T)
• 'nitrate' - Gridded nitrate array (micromole/liter).
• 'chlorophyll' - Gridded chlorophyll array (microgram/liter).

Smith, W.O., Jr., M.S. Dinniman, J.M. Klinck and E.E. Hofmann, 2003. Biogeochemical climatologies of the Ross Sea, Antarctica: seasonal patterns of nutrients and biomass. Deep-Sea Research II, 50(22-26),3083-3101, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2003.07.010