CALCOFI: Global Ocean Station Profiles, 1921-1962

From March 21, 1921 to December 29, 1962, this dataset contains oceanographic station and bathythermograph data collected worldwide from ships like the CAPITAN CANEPA. It includes discrete depth measurements of temperature, salinity, and other chemical parameters from bottle and CTD casts, processed into standard NODC formats. The data also contain interpolated values for standard depths and auxiliary meteorological observations.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term temperature and salinity trends in the upper ocean layers based on historical bottle cast data.
• Studying the thermal structure of the ocean's upper 285 meters using the mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) profiles.
• Investigating relationships between physical parameters (e.g., density, sound velocity) and chemical nutrients (phosphate, silicate, nitrate) at discrete stations.
• Reconstructing historical ocean conditions and meteorological events from reported auxiliary data like air temperature, wind, and water transparency.

Strengths

• Covers a significant multi-decade time range from 1921 to 1962.
• Includes data interpolated to standard depth levels, facilitating comparative analysis.
• Contains a global spatial distribution of oceanographic stations.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as exact row count, column names, and license are unavailable from all sources.
• Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data is limited to the upper ~285 meters of the ocean.
• A small proportion (~5%) of the data originates from electronic CTD/STD recorders, with the majority from older Nansen bottle casts.

Provenance

Source

US DOC; NOAA; NESDIS; NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA CENTER

Collection Method

Collected using CTD and bottle casts from multiple ship platforms, processed by NODC to standard formats (SD2, C128/MBT, UBT).

Time Range

1921-03-21 to 1962-12-29

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:21:59.990944 (metadata update on datagov); data collection ended in 1962.

Geography

World-wide distribution