Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from Fort Niagara Voyage

Indian Ocean and adjacent seas contain temperature-depth profiles collected by the ship Fort Niagara using mechanical bathythermographs from May 1944 to March 1945. The data, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into the C128 format, consists of paired temperature and depth measurements recorded at 5-meter intervals up to approximately 285 meters. This dataset provides a snapshot of upper ocean thermal structure from a specific historical period.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical upper ocean thermal stratification using paired temperature-depth values.
• Mapping regional temperature variations across the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Oman, Indian Ocean, and Laccadive Sea.
• Studying cruise-based oceanographic observations by correlating temperature profiles with reported date, position, and time.
• Investigating the limitations of mechanical bathythermograph data for studies confined to depths under 285 meters.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a documented standard format (NODC C128) ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides a specific temporal snapshot covering a nearly one-year period from 1944-05-20 to 1945-03-22.
• Spatial coverage is detailed, listing five specific sea regions within the Indian Ocean basin.
• Depth measurements are recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals, facilitating standardized analysis.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, file size, and license are unknown across all platforms.
• The maximum observation depth of approximately 285 meters restricts analysis to the ocean's upper layers.
• The last updated date conflicts between sources: one platform reports 2026-03-06 (metadata update), while another reports 1945-03-22 (data date).

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI

Collection Method

Data collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1944-05-20 to 1945-03-22

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:16:54.275308

Geography

Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Oman, Indian Ocean, Laccadive Sea