POSTER Session 2

VALIDATING OCEAN COLOR CHLOROPHYLL CONCENTRATION DATA WITH GLIDERS IN THE CANARY ISLANDS

Chlorophyll is likely the most used biogeochemical variable from ocean color satellites. Here, we aim to understand how gliders can be used for the validation of satellite data and how the vertical structure can be used to improve chlorophyll estimates from space. To do this, we partnered with PLOCAN’s (Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands) glider team. As part of the European Station of Time-series in the Ocean Canaries (ESTOC) project, PLOCAN deploys four 3-week long glider missions per year and maintains an oceanographic buoy moored northward of the Canary Islands. This provided a valuable amount of in situ data that was compared with chlorophyll-a products from Sentinel-3 and the SeaHawk CubeSat. Match-ups were extracted using ThoMaS (Tool to generate Matchups of OC products with Sentinel-3/OLCI), which was expanded to include SeaHawk data processing. We extracted a 5×5 window centered at the glider location to determine statistics for satellite data. QA/QC revealed that many of the images were strongly affected by dust, limiting the number and quality of matchups. While satellites primarily “see” the first optical depth, which is approximately 20% of the euphotic zone, the use of the vertical profile for validation produced reasonable results when scaled with respect to depth. The validation has a large number of outliers, likely caused by atmospheric correction not properly accounting for dust. Despite these caveats, preliminary results suggest that gliders have the potential to be used for validation of remote sensing-derived chlorophyll and ocean color validation in general.

*Benjamin Lowin, University of Georgia, USA, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5826-7216

Sara Rivero-Calle, University of Georgia, USA

Rubén Marrero, Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, Spain

Carlos Barrera, Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, Spain

Javier Arístegui, Instituto de Oceanografía y Cambio Global, Spain

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