North Pacific Ocean Upper-Layer Temperature Profiles from CAYUSE

Temperature-depth profiles from the North Pacific Ocean were collected on December 8, 1970, using a Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) aboard the CAYUSE. The dataset, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format, contains pairs of temperature and depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals. It is published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical temperature gradient in the upper 285 meters of the ocean on a specific date.
• Studying short-term thermal properties of the North Pacific Ocean's surface layer for a single cruise.
• Validating or comparing historical oceanographic data collection methods and standard formats like NODC C128.
• Using cruise information, date, position, and time metadata to contextualize a single oceanographic observation.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known, documented standard format (NODC C128) ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides precise metadata for each observation, including cruise, date, position, and time.
• Temperature measurements are recorded at a uniform 5-meter depth interval, facilitating straightforward analysis.

Limitations

• The dataset is extremely limited temporally, containing data from only a single day (1970-12 08).
• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of approximately 285 meters restricts analysis to the upper ocean layer only.
• Key quantitative details like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from the sources.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1970-12-08 to 1970-12-08

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:04:53.437219

Geography

North Pacific Ocean