Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from St Brides Bay

NOAA NCEI provides a dataset of mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) observations from St Brides Bay in the South Pacific Ocean. The data consists of temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals up to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters. It covers a specific period from February 19 to June 20, 1957.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal thermal structure changes in the upper ocean during 1957.
• Studying temperature-depth relationships at uniform 5-meter intervals.
• Investigating historical oceanographic conditions in the South Pacific region near St Brides Bay.
• Validating or calibrating oceanographic models with mid-20th century in-situ data.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a standardized NODC format (C128), ensuring consistency.
• Provides precise temporal coverage for a specific four-month period in 1957.
• Records include associated metadata such as cruise information, date, position, and time for each observation.

Limitations

• Platforms disagree on the last updated date (2026-03-05 vs. 1957-06-20).
• Key quantitative details like row count, file size, and column names are unknown.
• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of ~285m limits analysis to the ocean's upper layers only.

Provenance

Source

NOAA NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information).

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed to NODC standard C128 format.

Time Range

1957-02-19 to 1957-06-20

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:07:28.898025

Geography

St Brides Bay, South Pacific Ocean.