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Abstract Historically, the formulation of the wellbore temperature profiles during drilling, circulating, and cementing operations relied upon the boundary condition or BC at the bottomhole location, wherein the tubular and annular temperatures become equal. This study presents two other formulations to explore alternative to bottomhole BC's that may potentially occur in wellbores. Application of the energy balance in the wellbore for both forward and reverse circulations underpins all three formulations. The wellbore temperature profiles generated by implementing the energy balance in the system depends on the type of the boundary condition used. Initially, we generated various temperature profiles using these models. In general, we observed that the maximum temperature occurs at the end of the tubular or some distance away from the bottom. For open and cased-hole sections, the difference in heat-transfer coefficients triggers different magnitudes of heat transfer and affects the corresponding temperature profiles. We compared the performance of our models with those presented in the literature. Thereafter, we sought to validate the models with diverse set of field data. Given the ability of all three models to handle changes in the geothermal gradient due to the characteristics of the sediments, salt domes, and gas hydrates, we explored their performance in situations where there is significant heat transfer. The holistic approach pursued here provided the necessary insights into various temperature profiles in a given situation. Highlights • Two new analytical models suggest possible increased fluid temperature profiles in wellbore fluid circulations. • Model formulations allow handling changes in well diameter, geothermal gradient, and other thermal properties in forward and reverse circulations. • Feld examples aided both verifications of the proposed models with previous ones and validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]