The Connectivity Interface or "ConnIe" has been developed as a tool for environmental scientists and managers to investigate the patterns of spatial connectivity on Australia's North West Shelf (NWS). Specifically, it provides the user with an estimate of the probability that any two regions are connected by modelled ocean circulation over a specified dispersion period. These connectivity statistics were computed from the paths of neutrally buoyant particles computed from the "Northwest" circulation model (based on MECO), run over the period from 1994 to 1999. The circulation model used a rotated latitude-longitude grid, with a horizontal resolution of approximately 10km and a vertical resolution expanding from 3 m near the surface to a maximum of 200 m at depths below 1000 m. The model was forced by wind fields from the NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis, while temperature and salinity fields around the lateral boundaries were interpolated from a global circulation model known as the Australian Community Ocean Model (ACOM). Sea levels on the boundaries were also taken from the global model output, with the addition of a tidal component derived from a combination of coastal sea level data and output from a global tidal model. ConnIe is expected to find applications in areas such as larval dispersion and recruitment studies, and the development of scenarios and risk assessments for contaminant dispersion.

Algorithms are presented for density, potential temperature, conservative temperature, and the freezing temperature of seawater. The algorithms for potential temperature and density (in terms of potential temperature) are updates to routines recently published by McDougall et al., while the algorithms involving conservative temperature and the freezing temperatures of seawater are new. The McDougall et al. algorithms were based on the thermodynamic potential of Feistel and Hagen; the algorithms in this study are all based on the "new extended Gibbs thermodynamic potential of seawater" of Feistel. The algorithm for the computation of density in terms of salinity, pressure, and conservative temperature produces errors in density and in the corresponding thermal expansion coefficient of the same order as errors for the density equation using potential temperature, both being twice as accurate as the International Equation of State when compared with Feistel's new equation of state. An inverse function relating potential temperature to conservative temperature is also provided. The difference between practical salinity and absolute salinity is discussed, and it is shown that the present practice of essentially ignoring the difference between these two different salinities is unlikely to cause significant errors in ocean models.

The neutral density code comes as a package of MATLAB and/or FORTRAN routines which enable the user to fit neutral density surfaces to arbitrary hydrographic data. The FORTRAN implementation consists of a FORTRAN subroutine which labels a cast of hydrographic data with neutral density, and another subroutine which then finds the positions of specified neutral density surfaces within the water column. The MATLAB implementation consists of two MATLAB functions performing these same operations, only on sections of hydrographic data. Versions are available for Unix workstations running with the NETCDF data archiving library and PC's not running NETCDF. This latter code is suitable for compilation on Unix workstations or other machines not running the NETCDF library. The MATLAB version for the PC does not require compilation of the underlying FORTRAN code, unlike the UNIX version of the code. All code comes with documentation in the form of Readme files, as well as Makefiles and examples to provide check values for the user. This "in-house" CSIRO software is available under conditions which are attached with the software.

This dataset contains temperature data from the Tasman Sea. Data (including available XBT data) were collected since 1778. They have been subjected to quality control as an activity of CSIRO and BoM.