Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from the John R. Manning

Bathythermograph (MBT) data from the vessel JOHN R. MANNING in the North Pacific Ocean, collected from September 14 to November 10, 1954. The dataset contains temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters. Data was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean (0-285m) using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying seasonal ocean temperature changes in the North Pacific during fall 1954 using time-stamped profiles.
• Comparing historical ocean conditions with modern data using georeferenced observations (date, position, time).
• Validating ocean model hindcasts for the mid-20th century using standardized NODC C128 format data.

Strengths

• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring consistency for analysis.
• Provides a focused temporal snapshot with a clear 2-month time range from 1954-09-14 to 1954-11-10.
• Contains detailed metadata for each observation, including cruise information, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• The mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument limits observations to the upper ocean layers (max ~285m).
• Key quantitative details like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' metadata exists between platforms (2026-03-05 on Data.gov vs. 1954-11-10 on NASA Earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally from the JOHN R. MANNING cruise.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1954-09-14 to 1954-11-10

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:07:00.082257

Geography

North Pacific Ocean