South Atlantic Ocean Temperature-Depth Profiles from ARGO Cruise

285 meters is the maximum depth of observations from this historical oceanographic dataset. It contains temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals from a 1968 ARGO cruise in the South Atlantic Ocean, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format. The data provides a snapshot of the upper ocean's thermal structure over a nine-day period.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean layers using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying historical ocean conditions in the South Atlantic region using cruise position and time data.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model outputs for late October 1968 using precise temperature profiles recorded at 5-meter intervals.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring consistency.
• Profiles provide high vertical resolution with temperature data recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals.
• Covers a specific, well-documented nine-day cruise in the South Atlantic Ocean from October 27 to November 4, 1968.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and license are unknown, limiting reproducibility and reuse.
• The mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument limits observations to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, restricting analysis to the upper ocean only.
• Cross-platform metadata conflicts: one source lists 'oceanography' as a tag while others list none, and the 'last updated' date differs significantly between platforms (1968 vs. 2026).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally from an ARGO cruise.

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed by NODC to the C128 format.

Time Range

1968-10-27 to 1968-11-04

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:11:07.081866

Geography

South Atlantic Ocean