Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from the LEWIS Expedition

1952-05-23 to 1959-09-12 temperature-depth profiles collected by the mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) aboard the LEWIS in the East China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, and South Pacific Ocean. The dataset was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format. It provides a record of the thermal structure of the ocean's upper layers during the 1950s.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical temperature gradients in the upper 285 meters of the ocean using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying seasonal or interannual thermal variability in the East China Sea and Philippine Sea from cruise information, date, and position data.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model simulations of the upper ocean for the 1950s period.
• Investigating the spatial distribution of near-surface ocean temperatures across the North and South Pacific basins.

Strengths

• Provides standardized, uniformly sampled data with temperature recorded at consistent 5-meter depth intervals.
• Covers a multi-year time series (over 7 years) from a specific research vessel, offering temporal continuity.
• Includes precise metadata for each observation: cruise information, date, geographic position, and time.

Limitations

• Instrument limitation restricts observations to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, capturing only the upper ocean.
• Conflicting metadata: the last updated date is reported as 2026-04-01 on Data.gov but 1959-09-12 on NASA EarthData, creating uncertainty about processing recency.
• Core dataset metrics (row count, file size, column names) 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

1952-05-23 to 1959-09-12

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:17:34.772114

Geography

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