USS John Hood Historical Ocean Temperature Profiles 1953-1959

285 meters is the maximum depth for temperature observations from this mechanical bathythermograph dataset. It contains temperature-depth profile pairs recorded at 5-meter intervals from the USS John Hood across seven seas from July 1953 to September 1959. The data was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into its standard C128 format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the seasonal thermal structure of the upper ocean (0-285m) using temperature-depth pairs.
• Mapping historical sea surface temperature and subsurface gradients across the Arabian Sea, Caribbean Sea, and North Atlantic.
• Studying decadal changes in near-surface ocean heat content by comparing with modern sensor data.
• Correlating cruise information, date, position, and time with specific temperature-depth observations for spatiotemporal analysis.

Strengths

• Data covers a 6-year time range from 1953-07 16 to 1959-09-27, providing a multi-year record.
• Observations are standardized in the NODC C128 format with temperature recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals.
• Geographic coverage spans seven distinct bodies of water, including the Mediterranean Sea and North Pacific Ocean.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as exact row count, column names, and dataset size are unknown across all platforms.
• The mechanical bathythermograph instrument limits useful data to the upper ocean layers, with a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), from USS John Hood.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1953-07-16 to 1959-09-27

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:34:06.271386

Geography

Arabian Sea, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Oman, Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, North Sea