Deep Sea Temperature Measurements

Deep Sea Temperature Reference Data Set

Project Overview
About a decade ago the community involved in efforts to improve how well models represented the downward mixing of heat and other properties into the deep ocean recognized the need for additional observations from the deep ocean. Such measurements could be assimilated into ocean models and also used to assess the realism of, for example, storage of heat in the deep ocean. OceanSITES, the international collaborative effort to collect sustained time series observations at open ocean sites under the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), launched an effort to coordinate deployment of temperature recorders in the deep ocean on OceanSITES moorings. Funds were raised for a pool of instruments and individual investigators also contributed instruments. The Upper Ocean Processes Group at WHOI joined this effort and committed to deploy temperature recorders on its NTAS, Stratus, and WHOTS Ocean Reference Stations. This page is set up to share quality controlled temperature data from the Stratus and NTAS deployments from 2012 onwards. Quality control efforts have produced temperature time series with error estimates. The Stratus merged dataset (2012-2025) has been published in the WHOI Library Dataverse with DOI 10.26027/DATAKX5CQK.

Important Notes
• For data from individual deployments of the Stratus and NTAS Ocean Reference Stations, please see the Archive pages in the Current Projects section
• Deep sea temperature measurements are collected using SBE16 and SBE37 instruments at approximately 39 meters above the sea floor
• All data undergo rigorous quality control protocols
• Spatial Variability: Although deployments were generally co-located, some were separated by 50 to 300 km. Users should consider potential spatial variability when interpreting the merged time series
• Data Gaps: Brief gaps exist between deployments, which may affect analyses requiring continuous records. These gaps are clearly marked with fill values
• Salinity and Pressure: Although conductivity was collected by all instruments, and pressure was collected by some, the pressure and computed salinity data are not included here due to unresolved quality control issues
• Please note the version date as well as the citation for any data you download

Data Download Information
Data Format: NetCDF using the OceanSITES specification
Standards Used: Climate and Forecast Standard (CF)
Data Status: Provisional - further adjustments to the data may be needed

Data is presented in NetCDF using the OceanSITES specification, which is based on the Climate and Forecast Standard. A full description of the OceanSITES specification is available on the OceanSITES web site.

Citation Requirements
When using the Stratus datasets, please cite:

Quality Control Procedures
Data undergo rigorous quality control including:
• Timing checks
• Automated spike detection
• Systematic multi-sensor validation
• Statistical validation
• Expert validation
• Applying merging protocols

Processing code is available in the public GitHub repository: https://github.com/yugaophd/ORS-processing

Variables Included
• Sea water temperature (°C)

Download Deep Sea Temperature Data

Dataset 1: Stratus (2012-2025)

Merged dataset from all Stratus deployments

Dataset	Period	Download
Deep Sea Temperature	2012-2025	OS_Stratus_DeepT_2012-2024_merged.nc (1.0 MB) View NetCDF Header

DOI: 10.26027/DATAKX5CQK
WHOI Dataverse: View in WHOI Library

Note: Metadata is included in the NetCDF file. Use ncdump -h filename.nc to view header information, or view the header text file.

Dataset 2: NTAS (2021-2024)

Merged dataset from NTAS deployments (separate DOI)

Dataset	Period	Status
Deep Sea Temperature	2021-2024	Coming soon - data processing in progress

Technical Documentation Links

• Processing Code Repository (GitHub)
• Individual Deployment Processing Reports

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Last updated: June 2025.