NOAA Ship Delaware II XBT Ocean Temperature Profiles 1971

North Atlantic Ocean temperature-depth profiles collected via expendable bathythermograph (XBT) instruments from NOAA Ship Delaware II. The data covers a one-week cruise from January 5 to January 11, 1971, and was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C116 format. This format records paired temperature-depth values at non-uniform inflection points to define the temperature curve.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical ocean thermal structure using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying spatial temperature gradients in the North Atlantic using cruise position data.
• Calibrating or validating ocean climate models with in-situ profile data from 1971.
• Researching the evolution of expendable bathythermograph (XBT) instrumentation and data processing standards.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a documented NODC standard format (C116/C118) for consistency.
• Provides specific temporal coverage for a dedicated research cruise (1971-01-05 to 1971-01-11).
• Describes the inflection point method for recording data, which optimizes for profile accuracy.

Limitations

• Key technical details like row count, column names, and file size are unknown.
• The dataset's presence on multiple platforms (Data.gov, NASA Earthdata) suggests importance, but the NASA entry lacks any descriptive metadata.
• The listed last update date (2026-04-01) on Data.gov is likely a system artifact and not a true data revision.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally from NOAA Ship Delaware II.

Collection Method

Collected using expendable bathythermograph (XBT) instruments during a research cruise and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1971-01-05 to 1971-01-11

Freshness

1971-01-11 00:00:00

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean