Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from Bathythermographs

Temperature profile data from four types of bathythermograph instruments collected in the adjacent seas of Japan. The collection includes over 510,000 station profiles from mechanical, expendable, digital, and airborne bathythermographs, spanning from 1955 to 1995. Data was compiled and is maintained by the organization SCIOPS.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term temperature trends at standard depth levels for climate change studies.
• Calibrating ocean models using historical temperature profile data from the adjacent seas of Japan.
• Studying the performance and data characteristics of different bathythermograph types (MBT, XBT, DBT, AXBT) over time.
• Investigating seasonal or interannual variability in ocean thermal structure from the 1955-1995 record.

Strengths

• Large collection of over 510,000 individual station profiles.
• Long temporal coverage spanning four decades from 1955 to 1995.
• Data from four distinct instrument types allows for methodological comparison.

Limitations

• Spatial coverage is limited primarily to the adjacent seas of Japan, not global.
• Data collection ended in 1995, making it a historical archive with no recent updates.
• Specific row counts, column names, and data formats are not provided in the description.

Provenance

Source

SCIOPS, with data also published in CSK, KER-Data Report, and Oceanographic Atlas for JRK.

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT), expendable bathythermograph (XBT), digital bathythermograph (DBT), and airborne expendable bathythermograph (AXBT) instruments.

Time Range

1955 to 1995 for primary bathythermograph data; IGOSS data from 1976 onward.

Freshness

null

Geography

Adjacent seas of Japan for primary data; Northwestern Pacific (1976-1981) and global (from 1982) for IGOSS data.