Historical Mechanical Bathythermograph Data from Nine Ships (1953-1968)

NOAA NCEI provides a dataset of mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) temperature-depth profiles collected from nine U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey ships. The data covers the Bering Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, and Philippine Sea over a 15-year period from 1953 to 1968. Each observation includes cruise information, date, position, time, and temperature values recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals up to approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical sea surface temperature and subsurface thermal structure using temperature-depth pairs.
• Studying spatial and temporal variability of upper ocean heat content across multiple ocean basins.
• Validating or calibrating ocean model simulations for the mid-20th century using in-situ profile data.
• Correlating cruise, date, position, and time metadata with other historical oceanographic records.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a standardized NODC format (C128), ensuring consistent structure.
• Provides a 15-year time series (1953-1968) from nine distinct ships, offering spatial and temporal coverage.
• Temperature profiles are recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating comparative analysis.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from the sources.
• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of ~285m limits analysis to the upper ocean layers only.
• License and authorship information are not provided, which may affect clarity on reuse terms.

Provenance

Source

NOAA NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information), from U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey ships.

Collection Method

Temperature-depth profiles collected using mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instruments and processed by NODC to the C128 standard format.

Time Range

1953-07-23 to 1968-12-31

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:55:21.696286

Geography

Bering Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea