Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from R/V ASTERIAS

Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data captures temperature-depth profiles from a single cruise of the R/V ASTERIAS in the North Atlantic Ocean on August 29, 1957. The dataset, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the C128 standard format, contains pairs of temperature and depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals. It is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical thermal structure of the upper 285 meters of the ocean on a specific historical date.
• Studying temperature gradients at uniform 5-meter depth intervals for a given location and time.
• Using reported cruise information, date, position, and time to correlate oceanographic conditions with specific ship operations.
• Investigating historical sea surface temperature data in the North Atlantic region.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known, documented standard (NODC C128 format) ensuring a consistent structure.
• Provides precise geospatial and temporal context with cruise, date, position, and time reported for each observation.
• Temperature-depth pairs are recorded at a consistent, high-resolution interval of 5 meters.

Limitations

• The dataset is limited to a single day of observations (1957-08 29), offering a very narrow temporal snapshot.
• Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instruments have a maximum observational depth of approximately 285 meters, restricting analysis to the ocean's upper layers.
• Key metadata such as exact row count, file size, column names, and license are not provided across the listed platforms.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument during an R/V ASTERIAS cruise and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1957-08-29 to 1957 08-29

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:43:26.927817

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean