Courtney Ship Bathythermograph Profiles from 1959-1960

NOAA_NCEI provides a dataset of mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) temperature-depth profiles collected by the ship COURTNEY. The data covers a 13-month period from November 1959 to December 1960 across the Caribbean Sea, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, and South Pacific Oceans. It has been processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing upper ocean thermal structure using temperature-depth pairs recorded at 5-meter intervals.
• Studying historical sea surface temperature patterns across multiple ocean basins.
• Mapping cruise tracks and sampling locations using reported date, position, and time for each observation.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model outputs for the upper 285 meters of the water column.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a standardized NODC format (C128), ensuring consistency.
• Provides a specific 13-month time series from late 1959 to late 1960.
• Covers a wide geographic range across five major ocean basins.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from all sources.
• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of ~285 meters limits analysis to the upper ocean layers only.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026 vs. 1960), creating uncertainty about data currency.

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI / National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC)

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument from the ship COURTNEY and processed to NODC standard C128 format.

Time Range

1959-11-10 to 1960-12-08

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:15:48.902296

Geography

Caribbean Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean