Historical North Pacific Ocean Temperature Profiles from USS LASSEN

North Pacific Ocean temperature-depth profiles were collected by the USS LASSEN using a mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) on September 17, 1941. The dataset contains pairs of temperature and depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format. Data is limited to the upper ocean layers, with a maximum observation depth of approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical temperature gradient in the upper ocean on a specific historical date.
• Studying the thermal structure of the North Pacific Ocean's surface layer for climate model validation.
• Examining historical instrumentation data from mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) surveys.
• Correlating cruise information, date, position, and time with observed temperature-depth pairs.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Temperature values are recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating direct comparison and analysis.
• Each observation includes associated metadata: cruise information, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• The dataset covers only a single day (1941-09 17), offering a very limited temporal snapshot.
• MBT instrument limits observations to a maximum depth of ~285m, restricting analysis to the upper ocean only.
• Key metadata such as row count, file size, license, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument from the USS LASSEN and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1941-09-17 to 1941-09-17

Freshness

2026,04-01 15:28:44.081558

Geography

North Pacific Ocean