Ocean Color Image Gallery

Barents Sea

While a storm spins over northwestern Russia, skies are clear over the Barents Sea where vast numbers of phytoplankton color the water with various shades of green and turquoise. A significant portion of the phytoplankton are probably coccolithophores. Those protists make and shed tiny calcite plates that are very good at reflecting solar photons back to space where orbiting radiometers can intercept them.

The above Aqua/MODIS image was collected on August 2, 2021. Click on it to get a larger version.