Ocean Color Satellite Instruments

Satellite observations of ocean color began in 1978 with the launch of the Costal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) instrument on the NIMBUS-7 satellite (Mitchell, 1994). CZCS observations continued through about junke 1986, although with problems caused by sensor degradation in its later yeras (Evan and Gordon, 1994). The next satellite instruments were the Japanese Ocean Color and Temperature Sensore (OCTS) on the ADEOS-1 satellite that operated from August 1996 to June 1997, and the German Modular Optical Scanner (MOS) launched in 1996 on the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite IRS-P3. Other US instrument include the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) launched in August 1997, which has a five-year design life and continues to operate in 2004, and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) launched on TERRA in December 1999 and on AQUA in May 2002. Other Ocean Color Satellite and Instruments include the following. In 1999, the German Ocean Color Monitor (OCM) was launched on the sun-synchronous Indian IRS-P4 OCEANSAT and the Ocean Color Imager (OCI) was launched on the Republik-of-China Satellite (ROCSAT). Instead of being in a sun-synchronous orbit, ROCSAT is in a nearequatorial low-inclination orbit. In March 2002, the Chinese Ocean Color and Temperature Sensor (COCTS) was launched on the Haiyang-1 satellite (Ocean-1, Or HY-1) into descending sun-synchronous orbit with an approximate crossing tme of 1000 local time. HY-1 will be followed by the HY-2 and HY-3 satellites, which are scheduled at approximately two-year intervals. In December 2002, Japan launced the Global Imager (GLI) on the ADEOS-2 satellite into a 1030 descending sun-synchronous orbit, where ADEOS-2 failed in October 2003. For all the instruments, the International Ocean Color Coordinating Group (IOCCG) publication IOCCG (1999) describe their wavelength band and properties. Given the biological, oceanographic and atmospheric constraints discussed in this chapter, each of this instruments uses similiar wavelength band. Because SeaWiFS and MODIS have generated a program of research cruises and surface obsevations as well as extensive series of papers, report and conferences on this two instruments. For MODIS, SeaWiFS, and CZCS, table 6.1 list the wavelengthband used for ocean color observations. An Important difference between MODIS and SeaWiFS is that the MODIS band are narrower by factors of one-half to one-quarter, the MODIS data are 12 bit digitized as opposed to 10 bit for SeaWiFS, and as table 6.2 shows below, the MODIS band have about twice the signal-to noise ratio. The larger shift in band locations between SeaWiFS and MODIS is that the 510-nm SeaWiFS band was moved to 531-nm for MODIS. The purpose of this move was to improve the instruments response to accessory pigment and to match the 531-nm laser wavelength used in aircraft remote sending (Esaias et al., 1998). The other change is the addition of a narrow flourescence band at 678 nm. The locations of all these bands depend on two constraints: the optical properties og phytoplankton and suspended and dissolved oceanic material discussed in section 6.2, and the locations of the atmospheric and the solar absorption bands discussed next. To illustrate the constraints imposed by atmospheric and solar absorption, Figure 6.5 compares the locations of the MODIS and SeaWiFS band with the wavelength dependence of

the solar irradiance at the TOA, the atmospheric transmittance and the solar irradiance at the Earths surface. Figure 6.5a shows the TOA solar irradiance from Figure 3.9, where the chemical symbols mark the location of the major Fraunhofer absorption lines generated in the solar corona (Phillips, 1992). Figure 6.5b shows the atmospheric transmittance for the MODTRAN 1976 standard atmospher, where the oxygen, oxugen-A and water vapor absorption bands are marked; Figure 6.5c shows the solar irradiance at the suface for normal incedence, where the upper horizontal bars give the location of the SeaWiFS bands; the lower bars, the MODIS bands. The figure shows that the SeaWiFS 745-785 nm band overlaps the oxygen-A band, while the MODIS band are located so that they avoid all of the major Fraunhofer and the atmospheric absorption bands. The tabel and figure shows the SeaWiFS has a similiar set of bands to MODIS, although with one less band between 650-700 nm. The MODIS visible bands have characteristic widths of 10 nm, compared with 20 nm for SeaWiFS. For comparison, the table shows that CZCS had only three bands in the blue-green, one band in the red, and the single band in the NIR (not listed), which had insufficient gain for aerosol removal. The MODIS and SeaWiFS bands have the following purposes; the 412 nm band is used for detection of CDOM and suspended sediments; the 443, 490, 510, and 555 nm bands are used to determine chlorophyll concentrations. For MODIS, band 13 at 670 nm, band 14 at 678 nm, and band 15 at 765 nm are used for measurement of the chloprophyll a flourescence peak at 683 nm; the reason that MODIS band 14 and SeaWiFS band 6 are located at a slightly shorter wavelength than the flourescence peak is to aviod the oxygen absorption band at 687 nm. For SeaWiFS, the 765 and 865 nm bands, and for MODIS, the equivalent bands are used for atmospheric aerosol correction. For the CZCS, the 670 nm band ane was used for this purpose. For MODIS, SeaWiFS, and CZCS, Table 62. Gives an example of the magnitude of the received radiance and their instrument-associated uncertainties. The radiances are from measurements made in a region of very low pigment concentration in the summer Sargasso Sea and are taken near the scan edge to maximize the uncertainty (Gordon and Voss, 1999). The first five colomns in the table list the MODIS band number, the center wavelength 0, the maximum total radiance LTmax received at the satellite, a more typical total received radiance LT, and the corresponding values of the water-leaving radiances [Lw]N. The last three colomns list the values of the noise-equivalent delta-radiance NEL difined in Section 3.5.4, where the MODIS and SeaWiFS values are from preflight spesifications; the CZCS values, from in-orbit measurements. Examination of the table shows that MODIS is typically two to three times more sensitive than SeaWiFS, which is about twice as sensitive as CZCS. The expection are MODIS bands 13 and 14, which are six times more sensitive than SeaWiFS and about ten times more sensitive than CZCS. At 443 nm, the table also shows that [Lw]N makes up only 13 % of LT, so that about 90 % of LT consists of contributions from other sources. Since the goal of SeaWiFS and MODIS is to determine [Lw]N within 5 % (Hooker and McClain, 2000), to archieve this goal, the sum of the other radiances must be determined to within 1 %, or within 0,06 W cm-2 nm-1 sr-1. Because for MODIS or SeaWiFS, the desired accuracy is 5-10 times the NEL, the 5 % goal should be achievable.