HUSE MBT Temperature-Depth Profiles from the North Atlantic

NOAA NCEI provides a dataset of mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) observations from the HUSE cruise in the North Atlantic Ocean. The data contains temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, focusing on the ocean's upper thermal structure. It covers a specific period from April 1 to April 28, 1960, and includes cruise information, date, position, and time for each cast.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical temperature structure of the upper ocean for a specific cruise and time period.
• Studying historical ocean thermal conditions in the North Atlantic region during April 1960.
• Validating or calibrating models of upper ocean heat content using in-situ profile data.
• Correlating cruise-reported metadata (position, time) with observed temperature-depth pairs.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a standardized format (NODC C128), ensuring consistent structure.
• Provides a focused temporal snapshot with a clear 28-day observation window in April 1960.
• Includes essential metadata (cruise, date, position, time) for contextualizing each profile.

Limitations

• The maximum observation depth of ~285m limits analysis to the ocean's upper layers only.
• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by the sources.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, reporting both 2026-03 06 and 1960-04-28.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), from the HUSE cruise.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1960-04-01 to 1960-04-28

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:24:53.068654

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean