Furman Vessel Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from 1966

Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data records temperature-depth pairs from the research vessel Furman in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset covers a specific cruise from August 14 to September 10, 1966, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into its standard C128 format. Each observation includes cruise information, date, position, and time, with temperature recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals down to a maximum of approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical thermal structure of the North Pacific upper ocean using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying short-term oceanic temperature changes during a late-summer cruise using the date, time, and position columns.
• Calibrating or validating historical ocean model outputs for the 1960s period with instrument-specific (MBT) profile data.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a documented standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides precise temporal coverage for a focused research cruise over 28 days in 1966.
• Temperature measurements are recorded at uniform depth intervals (5 m), facilitating comparative analysis.

Limitations

• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of ~285 m restricts analysis to the ocean's upper layers only.
• Key quantitative details like total row count, column names, and dataset size are unavailable across all sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-03-05 on Data.gov vs. 1966-09-10 on NASA Earthdata).

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1966-08-14 to 1966-09-10

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:14:45.515298

Geography

North Pacific Ocean