Historical North Atlantic Ocean Temperature Profiles from USC&GS Peirce

Mechanical bathythermograph data from the USC&GS Peirce vessel, capturing temperature-depth profiles in the North Atlantic Ocean. The dataset covers a 19-month period from September 1965 to April 1967, processed into the NODC C128 standard format. It was collected and curated by NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal temperature changes in the upper 285 meters of the ocean using paired temperature-depth values.
• Mapping the spatial distribution of thermal layers in the North Atlantic using reported position data.
• Studying cruise-specific oceanographic conditions by linking temperature profiles with cruise information, date, and time.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Temperature readings are recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals, facilitating direct comparison.
• Each observation includes associated metadata: cruise information, date, position, and time.

Limitations

• Instrument depth limit of ~285 meters restricts analysis to the ocean's upper layers only.
• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and license are unavailable across all sources.
• The last updated date conflicts between sources (2026-03-05 on Data.gov vs. 1967-04-10 on NASA Earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument from the USC&GS Peirce research vessel.

Time Range

1965-09-14 to 1967-04-10

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:30:08.206252

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean.