Ocean Temperature and Salinity Profiles from the Northwest Pacific 1967-1984

NOAA NCEI Accession 8500196 contains physical oceanographic data from bottle and expendable bathythermograph casts. The Fisheries Agency of Japan and other institutions collected measurements from the Northwest Pacific Ocean between January 1967 and March 1984. Data are stored in the NODC Station Data II and Universal Bathythermograph formats, which include cruise, position, date, time, and depth-level observations.

Use Cases

• Analyze temperature-depth profile pairs from XBT casts to model ocean thermal structure.
• Study salinity and temperature measurements from discrete bottle/CTD casts at standard depth levels.
• Map cruise station positions, dates, and times to reconstruct historical sampling efforts.
• Compare interpolated standard depth level data with observed depth measurements for methodological studies.

Strengths

• Data spans a 17-year period from 1967 to 1984, providing a long-term record.
• Includes two standardized NODC formats (SD2 and UBT) with documented structure.
• Profiles from special XBT instruments reach depths of 1830 meters.

Limitations

• Approximately 5% of data originates from early electronic CTD/STD recorders, which may have different precision.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and complete column lists are not provided.
• Data collection ended in 1984, limiting analysis to historical conditions.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Collected via bottle/Nansen casts and expendable bathythermograph (XBT) instruments from multiple ship platforms.

Time Range

1967-01-07 to 1984-03-02

Freshness

Data collection concluded on 1984-03-02; it is a historical archive.

Geography

Northwest Pacific Ocean (limit-180).