Ambient shipping temperature profiles are essential for identifying the temperatures that packages experience during transportation. A proper ambient temperature profile is more nuanced than a climatic representation because packages experience lane-specific conditions that provide shielding from extreme temperatures (e.g. warehousing) or greater challenges (e.g. direct sunlight, airplane engines). To develop a representative ambient temperature profile, one needs to first identify the need that is being filled and the potential opportunities from the profile. Following definition of the need, understand how to build and identify a dataset robust enough to create a representative profile. If such a dataset is lacking, alternative methods of evaluating the ambient temperature environment may be available. I will share Merck's experiences developing ambient shipping temperature profiles from the principles above, as well as our experiences (both successes and learnings) from such profiles in the qualification of thermal shippers and real-world shipping.