Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from the North Pacific

Mechanical bathythermograph data from the R/V BLACK DOUGLAS cruise in the North Pacific Ocean, collected over an 11-day period in October 1950. The dataset consists of 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 the vertical thermal structure of the upper ocean using temperature-depth pairs.
• Studying short-term oceanic variability during a specific cruise from October 10-20, 1950.
• Investigating historical ocean conditions by combining cruise information, date, position, and time for each observation.
• Benchmarking or validating models of upper-ocean heat content against mid-century in-situ measurements.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known, documented standard (NODC C128 format).
• Provides consistent, high-resolution vertical sampling with temperature recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals.
• Contains precise metadata for each profile, including cruise, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• Row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Instrument limitation restricts observations to the upper ~285 meters of the ocean.
• Conflicting 'last updated' metadata exists between platforms (2026-03-05 on Data.gov vs. 1950-10-20 on NASA Earthdata).

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC).

Time Range

1950-10-10 to 1950-10-20

Freshness

2026-03 05 22:33:34.473671

Geography

North Pacific Ocean