Multi-year analysis of GOCI products in comparison with MODIS and VIIRS

Abstract

Chlorophyll, which is indicator for the amount of phytoplankton biomass, plays the important role in marine ecosystem due to the conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen and organic matter through photosynthesis. Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI), the world’s first geostationary ocean color satellite, has launched in June 2010 and has provided the near real-time ocean color products over the East Asian Marginal Seas (EASM). GOCI covered EASM region to include diverse ocean optical features (from clear water over the northern Pacific to extremely turbid water over the Yellow Sea). Whereas the GOCI data has been applied main to short-term monitoring, it is the time to examine multiyear GOCI records to itsconsistency with the well-known NASA’s ocean color satellites over the EAMS. We compare the consistency of chlorophyll-a data among the GOCI, MODIS, and VIIRS on the seasonal and inter-annual variations from 2011 to 2018. Although the spatial patterns are quite similar for all three satellites, the GOCI tends to underestimate the chlorophyll-a concentration compared to MODIS and VIIRS. Considering our regional coefficients in OC3 algorithm may partly contribute to the underestimation in GOCI chlorophyll-a but other factors (atmospheric correction) will be discussed in this study.