Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from the North Pacific

Temperature-depth profiles from the mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument aboard the CURRIER, covering the North Pacific Ocean and Philippine Sea. The dataset contains pairs of temperature-depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters. Data was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into its standard C128 format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean (0-285m) using temperature-depth pairs.
• Studying seasonal or interannual temperature variability in the North Pacific from 1950-1959.
• Mapping historical ocean conditions using reported cruise information, date, position, and time for each observation.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model simulations of the mid-20th century Pacific.

Strengths

• Provides a decade-long temporal record from 1950 to 1959.
• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring a consistent structure of temperature-depth pairs at 5-meter intervals.
• Contains precise metadata for each profile, including cruise, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• Instrument limitation restricts observations to the upper 285 meters of the ocean.
• Key quantitative details like total row count, file size, and column names are unavailable from the provided sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-03-05 on data.gov vs. 1959-11 10 on NASA).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), from the CURRIER research vessel.

Collection Method

Data gathered using the Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1950-04-10 to 1959-11-10

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:42:02.684147

Geography

North Pacific Ocean and Philippine Sea