Regional to global assessments of phytoplankton dynamics from the SeaWiFS mission

Photosynthetic production of organic matter by microscopic oceanic phytoplankton fuels ocean ecosystems and contributes roughly half of the Earth\u27s net primary production. For 13. years, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) mission provided the first consistent, synoptic observations of global ocean ecosystems. Changes in the surface chlorophyll concentration, the primary biological property retrieved from SeaWiFS, have traditionally been used as a metric for phytoplankton abundance and its distribution largely reflects patterns in vertical nutrient transport. On regional to global scales, chlorophyll concentrations covary with sea surface temperature (SST) because SST changes reflect light and nutrient conditions. However, the ocean may be too complex to be well characterized using a single index such as the chlorophyll concentration. A semi-analytical bio-optical algorithm is used to help interpret regional to global SeaWiFS chlorophyll observations from using three independent, well-validated ocean color data products; the chlorophyll a concentration, absorption by CDM and particulate backscattering. First, we show that observed long-term, global-scale trends in standard chlorophyll retrievals are likely compromised by coincident changes in CDM. Second, we partition the chlorophyll signal into a component due to phytoplankton biomass changes and a component caused by physiological adjustments in intracellular chlorophyll concentrations to changes in mixed layer light levels. We show that biomass changes dominate chlorophyll signals for the high latitude seas and where persistent vertical upwelling is known to occur, while physiological processes dominate chlorophyll variability over much of the tropical and subtropical oceans. The SeaWiFS data set demonstrates complexity in the interpretation of changes in regional to global phytoplankton distributions and illustrates limitations for the assessment of phytoplankton dynamics using chlorophyll retrievals alone

Asian dust events of April 1998

On April 15 and 19, 1998, two intense dust storms were generated over the Gobi desert by springtime low-pressure systems descending from the northwest. The windblown dust was detected and its evolution followed by its yellow color on SeaWiFS satellite images, routine surface-based monitoring, and through serendipitous observations. The April 15 dust cloud was recirculating, and it was removed by a precipitating weather system over east Asia. The April 19 dust cloud crossed the Pacific Ocean in 5 days, subsided to the surface along the mountain ranges between British Columbia and California, and impacted severely the optical and the concentration environments of the region. In east Asia the dust clouds increased the albedo over the cloudless ocean and land by up to 10-20%, but it reduced the near-UNI cloud reflectance, causing a yellow coloration of all surfaces. The yellow colored backscattering by the dust eludes a plausible explanation using simple Mie theory with constant refractive index. Over the West Coast the dust layer has increased the spectrally uniform optical depth to about 0.4, reduced the direct solar radiation by 30-40%, doubled the diffuse radiation, and caused a whitish discoloration of the blue sky. On April 29 the average excess surface-level dust aerosol concentration over the valleys of the West Coast was about 20-50 mug/m(3) with local peaks \u3e 100 mug/m(3). The dust mass mean diameter was 2-3 mum, and the dust chemical fingerprints were evident throughout the West Coast and extended to Minnesota. The April 1998 dust event has impacted the surface aerosol concentration 2-4 times more than any other dust event since 1988. The dust events were observed and interpreted by an ad hoc international web-based virtual community. It would be useful to set up a community-supported web-based infrastructure to monitor the global aerosol pattern for such extreme aerosol events, to alert and to inform the interested communities, and to facilitate collaborative analysis for improved air quality and disaster management

Regional to global assessments of phytoplankton dynamics from the SeaWiFS mission

Photosynthetic production of organic matter by microscopic oceanic phytoplankton fuels ocean ecosystems and contributes roughly half of the Earth's net primary production. For 13 years, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) mission provided the first consistent, synoptic observations of global ocean ecosystems. Changes in the surface chlorophyll concentration, the primary biological property retrieved from SeaWiFS, have traditionally been used as a metric for phytoplankton abundance and its distribution largely reflects patterns in vertical nutrient transport. On regional to global scales, chlorophyll concentrations covary with sea surface temperature (SST) because SST changes reflect light and nutrient conditions. However, the oceanmay be too complex to be well characterized using a single index such as the chlorophyll concentration. A semi-analytical bio-optical algorithm is used to help interpret regional to global SeaWiFS chlorophyll observations from using three independent, well-validated ocean color data products; the chlorophyll a concentration, absorption by CDM and particulate backscattering. First, we show that observed long-term, global-scale trends in standard chlorophyll retrievals are likely compromised by coincident changes in CDM. Second, we partition the chlorophyll signal into a component due to phytoplankton biomass changes and a component caused by physiological adjustments in intracellular chlorophyll concentrations to changes in mixed layer light levels. We show that biomass changes dominate chlorophyll signals for the high latitude seas and where persistent vertical upwelling is known to occur, while physiological processes dominate chlorophyll variability over much of the tropical and subtropical oceans. The SeaWiFS data set demonstrates complexity in the interpretation of changes in regional to global phytoplankton distributions and illustrates limitations for the assessment of phytoplankton dynamics using chlorophyll retrievals alone.Keywords: Decadal trends, Ocean color, SeaWiFS, Phytoplankton, Colored dissolved organic matte