Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from Atlantis II Cruises

7200157 records temperature-depth profiles from the research vessel ATLANTIS II, collected using Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instruments. The data, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the C128 standard format, covers a six-year period from 1962 to 1968 across multiple ocean basins. Each observation provides paired temperature and depth values at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum of approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean (0-285m) using temperature-depth value pairs.
• Studying spatial patterns of sea surface temperature and subsurface layers across the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans.
• Investigating temporal changes in ocean heat content during the 1960s using cruise date and position data.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model simulations for historical periods with instrument-measured profile data.

Strengths

• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring consistency for analysis.
• Covers a multi-year time range (1962-1968) across five major ocean regions.
• Provides uniform vertical resolution with temperature recorded at 5-meter depth intervals.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as exact row count, column names, and license are unavailable from the provided sources.
• Instrument limitation restricts observations to a maximum depth of ~285m, capturing only the upper ocean.
• The 'last updated' metadata conflicts between platforms (2026-03-05 on datagov vs. 1968-09 30 on nasa_earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), from the research vessel ATLANTIS II.

Collection Method

Collected using Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instruments and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1962-06-27 to 1968-09-30

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:49:07.043304

Geography

Indian Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, South Atlantic Ocean.