Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from the North Pacific

December 10-20, 1963 data from the vessel LANSING in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset contains temperature-depth profiles from Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) observations, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into its standard C128 format. It is published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical temperature structure of the upper ocean to approximately 285 meters depth.
• Studying short-term thermal variability in a specific North Pacific region over a 10-day period.
• Validating or providing historical context for ocean model simulations of upper ocean heat content.
• Correlating temperature observations with reported cruise information, date, position, and time for each cast.

Strengths

• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring a consistent structure for temperature-depth pairs.
• Temporal and spatial coverage is precisely defined for a 10-day cruise in the North Pacific Ocean.
• Temperature values are recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating analysis.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from all sources.
• The MBT instrument limits observations to a maximum depth of ~285 meters, restricting analysis to the upper ocean only.
• A conflict exists on the 'last updated' date between platforms (2026-03 06 vs. 1963-12-20), suggesting potential metadata issues.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument measurements processed by NODC.

Time Range

1963-12-10 to 1963-12-20

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:15:20.020282

Geography

North Pacific Ocean (from the vessel LANSING)