North Atlantic Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from 1964

February 26 to March 9, 1964, temperature-depth profiles from the mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) aboard OUTPOST in the North Atlantic Ocean. The dataset contains pairs of temperature-depth values recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, processed by NODC into the standard C128 format. It is hosted by NOAA NCEI and also appears on NASA EarthData.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical temperature gradient in the upper ocean (0-285m) for a specific cruise period.
• Studying short-term thermal variability in the North Atlantic using date, time, and position metadata.
• Validating or supplementing models of historical upper-ocean heat content for the 1960s.
• Correlating temperature profiles with other contemporaneous oceanographic or atmospheric datasets using precise location and time data.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides precise temporal coverage for a 13-day cruise in February-March 1964.
• Temperature measurements are recorded at a uniform 5-meter depth interval, facilitating analysis.
• Cross-platform presence (NOAA NCEI and NASA EarthData) indicates recognized importance and curation.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, specific column names, and license are not provided by any source.
• Instrument limitation restricts observations to the upper ocean (max ~285m), excluding deeper thermal structure.
• The last update date conflicts between sources (2026-04-01 on datagov vs. 1964-03-09 on nasa_earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information)

Collection Method

Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument measurements processed by NODC to C128 format.

Time Range

1964-02 26 to 1964-03-09

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:21:49.211801

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean (specific cruise track of OUTPOST not detailed)