Historical Bathythermograph Profiles from CALAMARES in the Pacific

285 meters is the maximum depth for temperature observations in this dataset. It contains mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data from the vessel CALAMARES, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into the standard C128 format. The profiles cover multiple Pacific seas from July 1943 to July 1945.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical upper ocean temperature gradients at uniform 5-meter depth intervals.
• Studying spatial thermal variation across the Bismarck Sea, Coral Sea, and South China Sea.
• Correlating cruise information, date, position, and time with observed temperature-depth pairs.
• Investigating seasonal or interannual changes in near-surface ocean heat content during the 1940s.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128) ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides a specific two-year time range (1943-07 02 to 1945-07-04) from a defined vessel.
• Explicitly documents the instrument's maximum observation depth (approx. 285 m) and measurement interval (5 m).
• Cross-platform presence on datagov and nasa_earthdata signals recognized archival importance.

Limitations

• Critical metadata such as row count, column names, file size, and license are unavailable across all sources.
• Data is limited to the upper ocean layer (max ~285m), excluding deeper thermal structure.
• The last updated date conflicts between platforms (2026-03-05 on datagov vs. 1945-07-04 on nasa_earthdata).

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument measurements processed by NODC.

Time Range

1943-07-02 to 1945-07-04

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:30:39.318733

Geography

Bismarck Sea, Coral Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, Solomon Sea, South China Sea, South Pacific Ocean, Tasman Sea