Historical Upper-Ocean Temperature Profiles from NAIFEH Cruises

East China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, and South China Sea temperature-depth profiles collected by the NAIFEH vessel using Mechanical Bathythermographs. The dataset contains observations from March 1956 to July 1957, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into its standard C128 format. Data is recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, useful for studying the thermal structure of the ocean's upper layers.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal and spatial thermal structure in the upper 285 meters using temperature-depth value pairs.
• Mapping historical sea surface temperature and subsurface heat content across the East China Sea and Philippine Sea.
• Studying cruise-based oceanographic conditions by linking temperature profiles with reported date, position, and time data.
• Calibrating or validating regional ocean models for the 1950s using instrument-specific profile data.

Strengths

• Provides standardized, processed data in the NODC C128 format, ensuring consistency.
• Covers a specific 16-month time range (1956-03-15 to 1957-07-17) across four western Pacific seas.
• Data is recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating systematic analysis of the water column.

Limitations

• Key metadata conflicts: row count, file size, columns, and license are unknown or unreported across all sources.
• Instrument limitation: Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) maximum depth is ~285m, restricting analysis to the upper ocean only.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument during NAIFEH cruises and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1956-03-15 to 1957-07-17

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:18:16.740581

Geography

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