VOL. 1: An Overview of SeaWiFS and Ocean Color
Citation:
Hooker, S.B., W.E. Esaias, G.C. Feldman, W.W. Gregg, and C.R. McClain, 1992: An
Overview of SeaWiFS and Ocean Color. NASA Tech. Memo. 104566, Vol. 1, S.B.
Hooker and E.R. Firestone, Eds., NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt,
Maryland, 24 pp., plus color plates.
SeaWiFS, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor, will bring to the
ocean community a welcomed and improved renewal of the ocean color
remote sensing capability lost when the Nimbus-7 Coastal Zone Color
Scanner (CZCS) ceased operating in 1986. The goal of SeaWiFS, scheduled
to be launched in August 1993, is to examine oceanic factors that
affect global change. Because of the role of phytoplankton in the
global carbon cycle, data obtained from SeaWiFS will be used to assess
the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle, as well as other
biogeochemical cycles. SeaWiFS data will be used to help elucidate the
magnitude and variability of the annual cycle of primary production by
marine phytoplankton and to determine the distribution and timing of
spring blooms. The observations will help to visualize the dynamics of
ocean and coastal currents, the physics of mixing, and the
relationships between ocean physics and large- scale patterns of
productivity. The data will help fill the gap in ocean biological
observations between those of the CZCS and the Moderate Resolution
Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on the Earth Observing Satellite-A
(EOS-A).
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