CALCOFI: Historical Ocean Station and Bathythermograph Data
Updated 4mo ago
53files
Available on 2 platforms
Sign in to view source links and access this dataset
Description
Over 60 years of oceanographic station data, from October 4, 1903 to December 19, 1963, were collected worldwide using bottle casts and CTD instruments from ships like the PARRAMATTA. The data, submitted by the Australia Navy and processed by the NODC, primarily contain temperature and salinity measurements, but columns suggest reports of dissolved oxygen, phosphate, silicate, nitrate, and pH. It also includes mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data useful for studying the thermal structure of the ocean's upper 285 meters.
Use Cases
Analyzing long-term temperature and salinity trends in the upper ocean based on station casts and MBT profiles.
Studying historical nutrient distributions (phosphate, silicate, nitrate) in global waters from bottle sample data.
Reconstructing past oceanographic conditions for climate model validation using the 60-year time series.
Investigating the thermal structure of the ocean's mixed layer using the MBT data limited to approximately 285 meters depth.
Strengths
Covers a long temporal range of over 60 years, from 1903 to 1963.
Includes data interpolated to standard depth levels for consistent analysis.
Contains both direct bottle cast measurements and a small percentage (about 5%) of early electronic CTD/STD recorder data.
Limitations
Column names and a precise row count are not provided in the available metadata.
The MBT data has a limited vertical resolution, useful only for the upper ~285 meters of the ocean.
There is a conflict in reported formats: one source mentions UBT format, while another mentions C128 (MBT) format.
Provenance
Source
Australia Navy, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC).
Collection Method
Collected using CTD and bottle casts (primarily multi-bottle Nansen casts) from oceanographic vessels.
Time Range
1903-10-04 to 1963-12-19
Freshness
2026-03-05 23:40:57.017776 (metadata update on datagov); the underlying data ends in 1963.
Geography
World-wide distribution.
Data is presented in legacy NODC standard formats (SD2 for station data, C128/MBT or UBT for bathythermograph). License information is not specified in the provided sources.