Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from J.C. Butler Voyages

Mechanical bathythermograph data from the USS J.C. Butler's 1944-1945 voyages across the western Pacific and East China Sea. The dataset contains temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of 285 meters. Data was processed into the NODC standard C128 format by the National Oceanographic Data Center.

Use Cases

• Analyzing upper ocean thermal stratification using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying seasonal or spatial temperature variation across the East China Sea, North Pacific, Philippine Sea, and Solomon Sea.
• Validating historical ocean models for the World War II era using precise date, position, and time metadata.
• Investigating the limitations of Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument data for the upper 285 meters of the water column.

Strengths

• Data is structured to a known standard (NODC C128 format) with uniform 5-meter depth intervals.
• Provides precise spatiotemporal context with cruise information, date, position, and time for each observation.
• Covers a specific 14-month time range (July 1944 to September 1945) across multiple western Pacific seas.

Limitations

• Instrument limitation restricts profiles to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, capturing only the upper ocean.
• Critical metadata conflicts exist: the last updated date is reported as 2026-03-05 on Data.gov but 1945-09-12 on NASA Earthdata.
• Core dataset attributes like row count, file size, column names, and license are unknown across all platforms.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument measurements processed by NODC to the C128 standard format.

Time Range

1944-07-07 to 1945-09-12

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:27:00.855783

Geography

East China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, Solomon Sea, South Pacific Ocean