Historical Gulf of Mexico Temperature Profiles from R/V Gerda

Mechanical bathythermograph data from a 1959 research cruise in the Gulf of Mexico provides temperature-depth profiles of the upper ocean. The dataset contains pairs of temperature and depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum of approximately 285 meters. Processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into the standard C128 format, it captures a snapshot of the thermal structure over a five-day period.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical thermal structure of the upper ocean using paired temperature-depth columns.
• Studying historical ocean conditions in the Gulf of Mexico using cruise, date, position, and time metadata.
• Calibrating or validating ocean models with in-situ temperature profile data from a specific time and location.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides precise temporal and spatial context with cruise information, date, position, and time for each observation.
• Captures a focused time series from March 13-17, 1959, offering a coherent snapshot of conditions.

Limitations

• The mechanical bathythermograph instrument limits observations to the upper ~285 meters of the ocean.
• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from the provided sources.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' field between 2026-04-01 (datagov) and 1959-03-17 (nasa_earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument from the R/V GERDA research vessel.

Time Range

1959-03-13 to 1959-03-17

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:24:02.155738

Geography

Gulf of Mexico