Historical MBT Temperature Profiles from the R/V Chicago

Temperature-depth profiles were collected using a mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) aboard the vessel CHICAGO in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset contains observations processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format, covering a one-week period in April 1966. Each record includes cruise information, date, position, time, and paired temperature-depth measurements.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical thermal structure of the upper ocean up to 285 meters depth using temperature-depth value pairs.
• Studying short-term ocean temperature variability in the North Pacific during April 1966 using time-stamped observations.
• Correlating historical cruise track data (position, time) with contemporaneous oceanographic conditions.
• Benchmarking or validating ocean model reconstructions of past sea surface and subsurface temperatures.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Temporal resolution is precise, with observations recorded for a specific one-week cruise from 1966-04-13 to 1966-04-20.
• Vertical sampling is systematic, with temperature data recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals.

Limitations

• Key quantitative details are missing across all sources: row count, file size, and specific column names are unknown.
• The instrument's maximum depth of ~285 meters limits analysis to the upper ocean layers only.
• Conflicting metadata exists: one source lists 'NOAA_NCEI' as the organization, while others list the author/organization as 'None' or unknown.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC)/NOAA NCEI

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument during a research cruise.

Time Range

1966-04-13 to 1966-04-20

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:01:06.314339

Geography

North Pacific Ocean (specific cruise track of the CHICAGO)