Great Lakes Historical Temperature Profiles from Mechanical Bathythermograph

Great Lakes temperature-depth profiles collected from the CISCO vessel in September 1964. Data is processed into the NODC C128 format, containing pairs of temperature and depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals. The dataset is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing thermal stratification in the Great Lakes using paired temperature-depth columns.
• Studying short-term seasonal temperature changes in September 1964 across the recorded locations.
• Validating historical oceanographic models for the upper 285 meters of water bodies.
• Correlating cruise information, date, position, and time with observed temperature profiles.

Strengths

• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring consistent structure.
• Temperature readings are recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating analysis.
• Covers a specific 17-day period from September 5 to 21, 1964, providing a temporal snapshot.

Limitations

• Key metadata conflicts: row count, column names, size, and license are unknown across all platforms.
• Instrument limitation: Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) data is only useful for the upper ocean layers, with a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument from the CISCO vessel and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1964-09-05 to 1964-09-21

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:08:11.828661

Geography

Great Lakes