World-wide oceanographic station data collected from November 14, 1916 to December 27, 1961. The dataset contains physical-chemical oceanographic data recorded at discrete depth levels from multi-bottle Nansen casts and electronic CTD/STD recorders, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). Cruise information, position, date, time, and measurements of temperature, salinity, and other parameters are reported for each station.
Use Cases
- Analyzing historical ocean temperature-depth profiles based on the reported temperature-depth pairs.
- Studying salinity distribution and ocean chemistry based on reported salinity, dissolved oxygen, phosphate, silicate, nitrate, and pH measurements.
- Investigating upper ocean thermal structure based on mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data with a maximum depth of approximately 285 m.
- Computing derived oceanographic parameters like density (sigma-t) and sound velocity based on the measured temperature and salinity.
Strengths
- Data spans a 45-year historical period from 1916 to 1961.
- Includes measurements interpolated to a set of standard depth levels.
- Contains data from a world-wide distribution of ocean stations.
Limitations
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data is limited to the upper ocean layers, with a maximum depth of approximately 285 m.
Provenance
- Source
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce
- Collection Method
- Data were collected using CTD and bottle casts from the GASCOYNE and other platforms and processed by NODC to standard formats.
- Time Range
- 1916-11-14 to 1961-12-27
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-03-06 00:07:15.586000; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- World-wide distribution