Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from TALUGA Cruises

Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and other Indo-Pacific regions are covered by this dataset of historical ocean temperature-depth profiles. It contains mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data collected during the TALUGA cruises from August 1946 to January 1948, processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format. The data provides paired temperature and depth measurements at uniform 5-meter intervals.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean (up to ~285m) using temperature-depth pairs.
• Studying historical sea surface temperature patterns and subsurface variability across the Indo-Pacific region.
• Validating ocean climate models by comparing against mid-20th century observational data.
• Investigating cruise-specific oceanographic conditions using reported cruise information, date, position, and time.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a standardized NODC format (C128), ensuring consistency for analysis.
• Provides a specific temporal range (1946-08-11 to 1948-01-08) from a historically significant period.
• Covers a wide geographic scope across nine named seas and ocean basins in the Indo-Pacific.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and data size are unavailable from all sources.
• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of ~285m limits analysis to the upper ocean layers only.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-03-06 on datagov vs. 1948-01-08 on nasa_earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) instrument during TALUGA cruises and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1946-08-11 to 1948-01-08

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:00:30.073734

Geography

Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, East China Sea, Gulf of Oman, Indian Ocean, Laccadive Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Philippine Sea, South China Sea.