Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from USS Rehoboth

Bathythermograph data from the USS Rehoboth provides temperature-depth profiles for the upper ocean layers across the Bering Sea, North Atlantic, and North and South Pacific Oceans. The dataset covers a 12-year period from 1952 to 1964 and was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center into a standard format. Each observation includes cruise information, date, position, and time, with temperature recorded at uniform 5-meter depth intervals.

Use Cases

• Analyzing decadal changes in sea surface temperature and upper ocean heat content using the temperature-depth pairs.
• Studying the spatial distribution of thermal layers in the Bering Sea and Pacific Ocean from the position and depth data.
• Calibrating or validating ocean model simulations for the mid-20th century using the standardized profile data.
• Investigating seasonal or interannual variability in the upper 285 meters of the ocean from the time-series observations.

Strengths

• Data is standardized to the NODC C128 format, ensuring consistent structure for temperature-depth profile pairs.
• Provides a 12-year temporal record (1952-1964) from multiple ocean basins, supporting time-series analysis.
• Each profile includes associated metadata such as cruise, date, position, and time, enabling spatiotemporal analysis.

Limitations

• Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument limits observations to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters, restricting analysis to the upper ocean.
• Key metadata such as exact row count, column names, and license are not provided across the available sources.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument on the USS Rehoboth and processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC).

Time Range

1952-01-01 to 1964-11-28

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:40:53.355711

Geography

Bering Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean