Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor
(SeaWiFS) Project (10 mb)Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project
Description:
"The purpose of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project is to provide quantitative data on global, ocean bio-optical, properties to the Earth science community. Subtle changes in ocean color signify various types and quantities of marine phytoplankton (microscopic marine plants), the knowledge of which has both scientific and practical applications." - SeaWiFS website. The SeaWiFS Project collects, processes, and distributes data received from an ocean color sensor orbiting the Earth on a satellite. The orbiting sensor can view every square kilometer of cloud-free ocean every 48 hours, providing global information on the oceans. The satellite observations can be used to derive the concentration of microscopic marine plants, phytoplankton, based on the color of the ocean. Greener water signifies an abundance of phytoplankton, while bluer water indicates less.
Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor
(SeaWiFS) with land background
This is of interest to scientists because it is thought that marine plants remove carbon from the atmosphere, similar to plants on land. The ability to continuously monitor biological activity with SeaWiFS helps scientists to understand the role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle, as well as other interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere. The oceans are shaded based on the chlorophyll (green pigment in plants) concentration as indicated on the color bar below. The lands are shaded to depict the vegetation. Green areas have abundant vegetation, yellow areas have little vegetation, and brown areas have no vegetation. As an addition to this dataset, another version is available that has the Carbon Dioxide record from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory included in the images. A second version of SeaWiFS is also available with the land as a still image, showing only the changes in the ocean through the year.
Notable Features:
- Shading on land depicts amount of vegetation
- Shading on ocean depicts concentration of chlorophyll
Data Category
Major: Ocean
Keywords:
Ocean, SeaWiFS, carbon, vegetation
| Data Set Name | seawifs/polar_holes |
| Data Set Source | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Data Set Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Visualization Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Audio | No |
| Download | FTP |
| Data Set Name | seawifs/no_holes |
| Data Set Source | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Data Set Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Visualization Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Audio | No |
| Download | FTP |
| Google Earth | KML file |
| Data Set Name | seawifs/mauna_loa_graph |
| Data Set Source | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NOAA |
| Data Set Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Visualization Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Audio | No |
| Download | FTP |
| Data Set Name | seawifs/land_background |
| Data Set Source | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Data Set Developer | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Visualization Developer | Dan Pisut, NOAA |
| Audio | No |
| Download | FTP |