Historical Gulf of Mexico Bathythermograph Temperature Profiles

NOAA_NCEI provides bathythermograph (MBT) data collected by USNS James M. Gilliss during a cruise from February 6 to February 21, 1968. The dataset contains temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters. Data has been processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical thermal structure of the upper ocean using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying historical ocean conditions in the Gulf of Mexico during February 1968 using cruise, date, position, and time metadata.
• Calibrating or validating ocean models with in-situ temperature profile data from a specific time period.
• Investigating short-term oceanographic variability during a focused 16-day research cruise.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a documented standard format (NODC C128), ensuring consistency.
• Provides a focused 16-day time series (1968-02-06 to 1968-02-21) from a single research vessel cruise.
• Includes core metadata for each observation: cruise information, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• The mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument limits observations to the upper ~285 meters of the ocean.
• Key quantitative details like total row count and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Conflicts exist on platform presence: the dataset is listed on Data.gov and NASA Earthdata, but the NASA entry lacks a description.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally from USNS James M. Gilliss cruise.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1968-02-06 to 1968-02-21

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:36:58.514131

Geography

Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic Ocean