Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles from 1944 Pacific Expedition

July to December 1944 temperature-depth profiles from the STEELE vessel in the North Pacific, Philippine Sea, and South Pacific. Data is processed into the NODC standard C128 format, containing pairs of temperature and depth values recorded at 5-meter intervals. The dataset is provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing thermal structure of the upper ocean (up to ~285m) for a specific 1944 time period.
• Studying spatial temperature variation across the North Pacific, Philippine Sea, and South Pacific Ocean.
• Validating or supplementing historical ocean climate models with cruise-based profile data.
• Examining the relationship between temperature and depth at uniform 5-meter measurement intervals.

Strengths

• Provides a specific five-month temporal coverage from July 16 to December 22, 1944.
• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring a consistent structure for temperature-depth pairs.
• Includes key metadata for each observation: cruise information, date, geographic position, and time.

Limitations

• Critical metadata conflicts exist: the row count, total size, and specific column names are unknown from all sources.
• Instrument limitation restricts observations to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, capturing only the upper ocean layer.
• The dataset's provenance and processing details beyond NODC standardization are not fully described.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1944-07 16 to 1944-12-22

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:47:16.283991

Geography

North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, South Pacific Ocean