Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from the MCGINTY Expedition
Updated 3mo ago
12files
Available on 2 platforms
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Description
November 1954 to August 1958 temperature-depth profiles collected by the vessel MCGINTY using mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instruments. The data, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the C128 standard format, covers the East China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, and South China Sea. Each record provides paired temperature-depth values at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum of approximately 285 meters.
Use Cases
Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean (0-285m) using the recorded temperature-depth value pairs.
Studying spatial patterns of sea surface temperature and mixed layer depth across the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and South China Sea using the provided position and date columns.
Investigating seasonal or interannual temperature variability in the western Pacific from 1954 to 1958 using the time-series of cruise observations.
Calibrating or validating ocean model hindcasts for the mid-20th century using in-situ historical temperature profile data.
Strengths
Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring a consistent structure for analysis.
Provides a multi-year time series from 1954 to 1958 across several ocean basins.
Observations are reported at a high vertical resolution of uniform 5-meter depth intervals.
Limitations
Instrument limitation restricts depth coverage to approximately 285 meters, capturing only the upper ocean thermal structure.
Key metadata such as exact row count, column names, and license information are unavailable across all sources.
The NASA Earthdata platform provides no descriptive information, limiting cross-platform synthesis.
Provenance
Source
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally from the MCGINTY vessel.
Collection Method
Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instruments and processed by NODC.
Time Range
1954-11-19 to 1958-08-20
Freshness
Metadata was last updated on March 5, 2026, on the Data.gov platform.
Geography
East China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, South China Sea
License information is not provided in any of the source descriptions. The dataset's utility is confined to the upper ocean due to the MBT instrument's depth limit.