NOAA Oceanographer 1973: High-Resolution CTD/STD Profiles from the NW Pacific

North Pacific Ocean data from NOAA Ship Oceanographer's 1973 cruise provides high-resolution vertical profiles of ocean properties. The dataset, processed to the NODC F022 standard, likely contains nearly continuous measurements of temperature, salinity, density, and possibly dissolved oxygen or transmissivity at depth intervals as fine as 1 meter. Cruise information, station positions, date, time, and environmental conditions at the time of each cast are also reported.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical ocean structure and water mass properties based on temperature and salinity profiles.
• Studying short-term oceanographic variability during a specific cruise period using time-series station data.
• Validating or calibrating ocean models with historical high-resolution in-situ measurements.
• Investigating relationships between surface meteorological conditions and subsurface ocean parameters.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a documented standard format (NODC F022), suggesting consistent structure.
• Provides high-resolution profiles with potential sampling as fine as 1-meter depth intervals.
• Includes contextual metadata for each station, such as position, time, and environmental conditions.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting: row count, file size, specific column names, and license are unknown across all sources.
• The dataset's age (1973) may limit its utility for studying contemporary ocean processes without complementary modern data.
• Data values may be subject to averaging, filtering, or interpolation, as noted in the description.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally from NOAA Ship Oceanographer.

Collection Method

Collected using CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth) and STD (Salinity-Temperature-Depth) instruments during a research cruise.

Time Range

1973-09-07 to 1973-09-20

Freshness

Metadata was last updated on 2026-03-05, though the underlying data is from 1973.

Geography

Northwest Pacific Ocean