Merchant Vessel Highland Chief Sea Surface Temperature and Meteorological Data

Australian Ocean Data Network provides hourly sea surface temperature and meteorological data from the container ship Highland Chief. The vessel operates a routine route between Melbourne, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the Solomon Islands. Data is quality controlled by the Bureau of Meteorology and made available daily.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional ocean heat content based on hourly bulk SST measurements.
• Analyzing meteorological conditions along shipping routes based on data from the ship's AWS.
• Studying temporal SST patterns in the Coral and Tasman Seas based on the vessel's transit data.
• Validating satellite-derived sea surface temperature products using in-situ hull sensor data.

Strengths

• Data undergoes quality control by the Bureau of Meteorology.
• Hourly instantaneous measurements provide fine temporal resolution.
• Vessel's specific route provides repeated transects across a defined geographic region.

Limitations

• Sensor installation depth varies with vessel loading, introducing a potential variable bias.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Bulk SST measured by an SBE48 hull contact sensor on the merchant vessel Highland Chief; meteorological data from the ship's automatic weather station.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-05 13:44:20.958390; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Route between south-east Australia (Melbourne), Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the Solomon Islands.