High-Resolution Ocean CTD Profiles from R/V Oceanus Cruise 36

CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) and STD (salinity-temperature-depth) data were collected during R/V OCEANUS Cruise 36 leg 2 from November 29 to December 16, 1977. The dataset, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the F022 format, provides high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature, salinity, density, and possibly dissolved oxygen or transmissivity at depth intervals as fine as one meter. It includes station metadata such as position, date, time, and environmental conditions for casts taken in the North Atlantic.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical structure of water properties like temperature and salinity based on high-resolution CTD casts.
• Studying temporal and spatial variability of oceanographic conditions during a specific 1977 cruise.
• Calibrating or validating ocean models using historical in-situ profile data.
• Investigating relationships between measured parameters like density (sigma-t) and dissolved oxygen.

Strengths

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

Limitations

• Key metadata such as exact row count, column names, and license are unavailable across all sources.
• Data is historical (1977), which may limit its applicability to contemporary studies without considering temporal changes.
• The 'last updated' metadata field shows a future date (2026-04-01), indicating a potential metadata error.

Provenance

Source

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with Val Worthington as principal investigator; processed by NODC.

Collection Method

Collected via ship-based CTD/STD instrument casts during a research cruise.

Time Range

1977-11-29 to 1977-12-16

Freshness

1977-12-16 00:00:00

Geography

North Atlantic (specific cruise track of R/V OCEANUS Cruise 36 leg 2)