Robotic Ocean Gliders as Vicarious Ocean Color Calibration and Validation data for MODIS-Aqua, Suomi-NPP VIIRS, JPSS-1, and PACE.

Abstract:

NASA heavily invests in satellite observations of ocean chlorophyll because of its importance to understanding the global carbon cycle and marine ecosystem productivity in coastal systems. Currently, there are three primary satellite system (MODIS-Aqua, Suomi-NPP VIIRS, and JPSS-1) that radiometrically retrieve chlorophyll with four future missions (PACE, JPSS 2-4) scheduled. Calibration-grade observations of in-situ chlorophyll are sparse. This is because they require the collection of whole water samples aboard ocean-going ships during a satellite overflight, which are then later chemically analyzed in laboratories. However, the development of long deployment robotic gliders have increased the number of in-situ ocean chlorophyll estimates by orders of magnitude using fluorometric techniques. We develop a post-processing method that increases the quality of these fluorometric measurements and use techniques to leverage their high-volume to create a new calibration dataset for current and future NASA ocean color satellites and airborne platforms.