Historical Bathythermograph Data from the PRESLEY Cruise in 1945

Four months of ocean temperature-depth profiles collected during the PRESLEY cruise from January to May 1945. The dataset, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC), covers multiple Pacific Ocean regions including the Bismarck Sea, Coral Sea, and Philippine Sea. It provides paired temperature and depth measurements at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing upper ocean thermal structure using temperature-depth value pairs.
• Studying historical sea surface temperature patterns across specified Pacific regions.
• Investigating cruise-based oceanographic data collection methods from the mid-20th century.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model outputs for the specified time period and locations.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a standardized NODC format (C128), ensuring consistency.
• Provides a specific four-month time range (1945-01-25 to 1945-05-29) for temporal analysis.
• Covers a geographically diverse set of six Pacific Ocean regions.

Limitations

• Multiple sources list conflicting or missing metadata for row count, size, license, and author.
• Instrument limitation restricts data usefulness to the upper ocean layers only (max depth ~285m).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument during the PRESLEY cruise and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1945-01-25 to 1945-05-29

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:13:54.448643

Geography

Bismarck Sea, Coral Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, Solomon Sea, South Pacific Ocean.