Wake Island Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles 1957-1958

June 1957 to December 1958 temperature-depth profiles collected via mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) near Wake Island in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset was processed by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) into the standard C128 format, recording temperature at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters. It provides a snapshot of the thermal structure of the ocean's upper layers during this period.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the vertical thermal structure of the upper ocean using paired temperature-depth values.
• Studying seasonal or temporal changes in near-surface ocean heat content around Wake Island from 1957 to 1958.
• Using cruise information, date, position, and time metadata to contextualize historical oceanographic observations.

Strengths

• Data is standardized in the NODC C128 format, ensuring consistency in temperature-depth pair recording.
• Provides a focused temporal snapshot of over a year of observations from June 1957 to December 1958.
• Explicitly documents the instrument's maximum observation depth (~285 m), clarifying its applicability to upper ocean studies.

Limitations

• Critical quantitative metadata like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• The MBT instrument's maximum depth of ~285 meters limits analysis to the upper ocean layers only.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-03-06 on datagov vs. 1958-12-05 on nasa_earthdata).

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), originally processed by NODC.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1957-06-22 to 1958-12-05

Freshness

2026-03-06 00:14:05.371485

Geography

Wake Island, North Pacific Ocean