Dr. Louis E. Keiner
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
4 PM, Thursday, October 30, 1997
Room 101, Olin Physical Laboratory
The ocean is an essential component of the Earth biosphere which maintains conditions crucial for life on the planet. It directly provides about 20% of the food and half the O2 used by humanity. The oceanic biosphere is constantly changing in response to atmospheric and radiative forcing, and, until recently, there was no effective method for monitoring oceanic physics and biology on synoptic or long-term scales. Satellite oceanography has helped fill this data void, providing global coverage and retrieval of physical and biological information. Included in this are such geophysical parameters as sea surface temperature, chlorophyll concentrations, surface winds, currents, and ice cover, as well as climate phenomena such as hurricanes and El Nino. The Marine Optics Team of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is involved in developing algorithms for the determination of ocean color products using the current generation of ocean color sensing satellites, such as SeaWiFS. Ocean color sensing satellites measure upwelling radiances at several discrete wavelengths in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The remote sensing of ocean color from space provides information on the abundance of phytoplankton and the concentration of dissolved and particulate material in surface ocean waters. This information can be used to investigate biological productivity in the oceans, marine optical properties, the interaction of winds and currents with ocean biology, and how human activities influence the oceanic environment.