LASER REMOTE SENSING OF CHROMOPHORIC DISSOLVED ORGANIC MATTER AND ALGAL PIGMENTS OFF THE SVALBARD ISLANDS: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR MERIS CAL/VAL IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN

• Main Authors: Luca Fiorani, Francesco Colao, Annalisa Di Cicco, Antonio Palucci, Claudio Poggi
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Svalbard; Phytoplankton
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.227.127; http://earth.esa.int/pub/ESA_DOC/meris_workshop_2008/papers%20/p50_fiora.pdf

Oceanic phytoplankton plays a major role in climate regulation. This explains the international efforts in space monitoring of chlorophyll-a concentration, the main indicator of algal biomass. In this study, the measurements of a laser remote sensor, the ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment) Lidar Fluorosensor (ELF), are presented. In July 2007, ELF participated to the AREX oceanographic campaign aboard the Polish research vessel Oceania. During the cruise, ELF gathered a large amount of data on chromophoric dissolved organic matter and algal pigments (phycoerythrin, phycocyanin and chlorophyll-a) off the Svalbard Islands that can be used for MERIS cal/val, eventually leading to a regional calibrated bio-optical algorithm for more accurate estimates of phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean. 1.