High-Resolution CTD/STD Water Column Profiles from Gulf of Alaska

NODC Accession 8900139 contains high-resolution CTD/STD data from the RV Alpha Helix in the Gulf of Alaska. The data, processed to the NODC F022 standard, provides nearly continuous profiles of temperature, salinity, density, and possibly dissolved oxygen or transmissivity at depth intervals as fine as 1 meter. Cruise information, station positions, and environmental conditions at the time of each cast are also reported.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical water column structure based on high-resolution temperature and salinity profiles.
• Studying coastal ocean dynamics in the Gulf of Alaska using station position and time-series data.
• Calculating derived oceanographic parameters like density (sigma-t) from the core measurements.
• Investigating relationships between physical properties and other parameters like dissolved oxygen.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a recognized standard (NODC F022 format), suggesting consistent quality control.
• Provides high-resolution vertical profiles, with data potentially reported at 1-meter intervals.
• Includes contextual metadata for each station, such as position, time, and environmental conditions.

Limitations

• Key metadata like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• The last update date (2026-03-05) on Data.gov conflicts with the data's temporal coverage (1989), suggesting metadata freshness may not reflect data age.
• Documentation gaps exist, as the full parameter list and specific processing details are inferred from the format description.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via CTD/STD instruments deployed from the RV Alpha Helix and processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC).

Time Range

1989-04-06 to 1989-04-11

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:52:29.044008 (Data.gov metadata update)

Geography

Coastal Waters of Southern Alaska, Gulf of Alaska