Ocean Temperature and Chemistry Profiles from the Philippine Sea, 1971-1989

From 1971 to 1989, this dataset contains physical and chemical oceanographic data from CTD, STD, and XBT casts conducted primarily in the Philippine Sea. Data were collected by the Japanese Hydrographic Office and Maritime Safety Agency and processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into standard Station Data II (SD2) and Universal Bathythermograph (UBT) formats. It includes measurements at observed and interpolated standard depth levels, with a small percentage from electronic sensors.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical ocean temperature-depth profiles based on XBT (expendable bathythermograph) data.
• Studying vertical distributions of physical-chemical properties based on CTD/STD and Nansen cast data.
• Investigating long-term changes in water column structure in the Philippine Sea region based on the 18-year time span.
• Benchmarking or validating ocean models with interpolated standard depth level data mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Covers an 18-year time range from 1971-11-24 to 1989-12-28.
• Includes data from two standardized formats (SD2 and UBT) processed by NODC.
• Contains measurements from multiple instrument types, including electronic CTD/STD recorders for about 5% of observations.

Limitations

• Last updated 1989-12-28; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Japanese Hydrographic Office and Maritime Safety Agency; Hydrographic Division (MSA), processed by NODC/NOAA_NCEI.

Collection Method

Collected from CTD and XBT casts from the KOFU MARU and other platforms.

Time Range

1971-11-24 to 1989-12 28

Freshness

1989-12-28 00:00:00

Geography

Philippine Sea and other locations