Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from the CHEVIOT Expedition

Mechanical bathythermograph data from the CHEVIOT vessel, capturing temperature-depth profiles in seven Asian seas from 1956 to 1958. The dataset is processed into the NODC C128 standard format, with each observation providing cruise information, date, position, and time. It consists of temperature values recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals down to a maximum of approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean (down to ~285m) using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying seasonal or spatial variability in sea surface temperature across the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and South China Sea.
• Validating or initializing regional ocean climate models with historical in-situ profile data.
• Researching mid-20th century oceanographic expedition methods and data standardization (NODC C128 format).

Strengths

• Data is standardized to a known format (NODC C128), ensuring consistent structure for temperature-depth pairs.
• Provides a specific temporal snapshot from a 16-month cruise across seven distinct marine regions.
• Records data at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating consistent vertical analysis.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: total row count, file size, column names, and license are unknown.
• Instrument limitation restricts observations to the upper ~285 meters of the ocean, missing deeper thermal data.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-04-01 vs. 1958-04-02), creating provenance uncertainty.

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information).

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument from the CHEVIOT vessel and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1956-11-23 to 1958-04-02

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:20:51.124062

Geography

Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean, Japan Sea, Laccadive Sea, South China Sea, Yellow Sea.