Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from the ARA CAPITAN CANEPA

Mechanical bathythermograph data collected by the vessel ARA CAPITAN CANEPA in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans between 1963 and 1967. The dataset contains temperature-depth profile pairs processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into the standard C128 format. It captures the thermal structure of the ocean's upper layers to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical sea surface temperature trends using the recorded temperature values.
• Studying the vertical thermal structure of the upper ocean from the paired temperature-depth profiles.
• Mapping regional oceanographic conditions in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans using cruise position data.
• Investigating seasonal or interannual variability in ocean heat content from the multi-year time series.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring consistent structure.
• Provides a multi-year time series from 1963 to 1967 for longitudinal analysis.
• Includes precise metadata for each observation: cruise information, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• Conflict in freshness: the data collection ended in 1967, but one platform lists a last updated date of 2026, suggesting a metadata update rather than new data.
• Instrument limitation restricts observations to a maximum depth of ~285m, useful only for upper ocean studies.
• Key technical details like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from all sources.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), from the vessel ARA CAPITAN CANEPA.

Collection Method

Collected using a Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1963-02-27 to 1967-12-01

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:10:08.540478

Geography

Indian Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean