Ocean Color Image Gallery

Persistent Northwestern Atlantic Bloom

The above Suomi-NPP/VIIRS view of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean collected on September 3, 2020 features a region of brighter, turquoise water that is likely the result of a coccolithophore bloom. If you roll your pointer over the image you will see a red 200-meter contour that outlines the edge of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and encloses the shallowest portion of the somewhat deeper Flemish Cap. One might guess that the location of the bloom was in some way tied to the submarine topography.

Click on the above image to see an animation of daily images from July 14 through September 10, 2020. When the copious cloud cover permits, you can see that the bloom remains in more or less the same place for well over a month. (The final frames of the animation show smoke from U.S. West Coast fires moving over the region.) A larger animation without the 200-meter contour also exists. A Suomi-NPP/NOAA-20/VIIRS composite shows the region before the bloom had formed in that location.