Impact of multiple satellite ocean color samplings in a day on assessing phytoplankton dynamics

Abstract

Ocean-color imagers on conventional polar-orbiting satellites have a revisit time of ~2 days for most regions, which is further reduced if the area is frequently cloudy. The Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI), the first ocean-color imager on a geostationary satellite, provides measurements 8 times a day, thus significantly improving the frequency of measurements for studies of ocean environments. Here, we use results derived from GOCI measurements over Taihu Lake to demonstrate that the extra sampling can be used to improve the accuracy of statistically averaged longer-term (daily) measurements. Additionally, using numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the coupling of diurnal variations of both biomass and photosynthetic available radiation can improve the accuracy of daily primary production estimates. These results echo that higher sampling frequency can improve our estimates of longer-term dynamics of biogeochemical processes and highlights the value of ocean color measurements from geostationary satellites. © 2012 Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute (KORDI) and the Korean Society of Oceanography (KSO) and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.