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Oceanography

Colour renewal from space

Nature volume 397, pages 301–302 (1999)Cite this article

*Application of Sea-Viewing Wide-Field-of-View Sensor Measurements for Understanding Marine and Terrestrial Ecosystems,American Geophysical Union 1998 Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 6 and 7 December 1998.

SeaWiFS is a follow-up to the pioneering Coastal Zone Colour Scanner (CZCS), which ceased operating in 1986. A decade-long blackout of global ocean colour data followed until the Japanese Ocean Colour and Temperature Scanner, OCTS, went into orbit in 1996 (it failed in mid-1997, however). Estimates of ocean phytoplankton levels are based on changes in the optical properties of sea water caused by chlorophyll-a, the primary photosynthetic pigment. The relative spectral changes in the green and blue bands (about 555 and 443 nm, the minimum and maximum absorption bands for chlorophyll) are proportional to phytoplankton levels.

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Figure 1: The biosphere from space.

Notes

  1. *Application of Sea-Viewing Wide-Field-of-View Sensor Measurements for Understanding Marine and Terrestrial Ecosystems,American Geophysical Union 1998 Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 6 and 7 December 1998.

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  1. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, PO Box 1000, Palisades, 10964, New York, USA

    Raymond Sambrotto

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  1. Raymond Sambrotto
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Sambrotto, R. Colour renewal from space. Nature 397, 301–302 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16808

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