ESA & Ocean Carbon Cycle Research
European Space Agency Contributes to Climate Change Investigations
The European Space Agency is working to merge ten years worth of ocean color data to help further the study of marine phytoplankton and ocean carbon cycle research.
It is very apparent that the world's oceans play an important function in regulating the natural carbon cycle. The European Space Agency (ESA) is contributing to the basic research required to understand the impact of additional carbon dioxide being added by human activities to the atmosphere each year.
Marine phytoplankton accumulate atmospheric carbon dioxide present at the ocean's surface through photosynthesis. These marine organisms store vast amounts of carbon dioxide in their tissues and are an important sink for the greenhouse gas. The overall color of the ocean reflects the number of marine phytoplankton present and this color information can be monitored by space borne satellites.
ESA GlobColour Project - Ocean color is seen by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an essential climate variable that is needed to conduct carbon cycle monitoring. A major undertaking of GlobColour is to merge existing ocean color data from multiple satellite systems into a common data set that represents an accurate record of global climate change. The GlobColour global data set currently distributed to researchers and public includes information related to:
- Chlorophyll Concentration
- Water Leaving Radiances
- Diffuse Attenuation Coefficient
- Colored Dissolved and Detrital Organic Materials
- Total Suspended Matter or Particulate Backscattering Coefficient
- Turbidity Index
- Cloud Fraction
- Quality Indicators
Satellite Systems Utilized - The ESA is merging ten years of data, some 55 terabytes of information, available from three different instruments aboard three separate satellites. These are the:
- MERIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) aboard ESA’s polar orbiting Envisat satellite
- MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite, a part of the agency's Earth Observing System
- SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor) aboard GeoEye’s Orbview-2 satellite
In an agency announcement concerning the GlobColour Project, Dr. Cyril Moulin of the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project says, "I am quite impressed by the work ESA has done so far within GlobColour. This 10-year dataset is going to be very useful for carbon studies and global modeling."
Ocean color data will be freely available to the public through the GlobColour website. This information will also be useful to natural resource managers and oceanographers studying the health of fisheries, plankton blooms and aquaculture operations. Later in 2008, ESA plans to provide near-real time ocean color observations to researchers. Continuity of the GlobColour Project has been assured thanks to financial support from the European Commission (EC) as part of their Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Initiative. Building links from one satellite dataset to another is seen by the EC as vital to distinguishing changes in climate change cycles.
