Churnside, James: NOAA (Project Lead)
Project Funding:
2016 - 2020
NRA: 2015 NASA: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
The intended proposal will be for a data mining exercise to support upcoming EXPORTS activities. The premise of this work is that the vertical distribution of chlorophyll in the ocean affects primary productivity and, eventually, the export of carbon to the deep ocean. The implication of this premise is that vertically-resolved remote sensing (i.e., lidar) may provide a significant contribution to the EXPORTS goals. We intend to investigate this using existing data from three lidars, along with supporting in situ measurements. The first lidar to consider is the CALIOP cloud/aerosol lidar on the CALIPSO satellite, because of its global coverage. We have demonstrated that this lidar can detect sub-surface plankton layers, although the vertical resolution is not as good as one would like for this application. To reduce the effects of surface reflection, the work will concentrate on the data collected with the lidar pointed off nadir and on the cross-polarized data. Lidar data from the region near Ocean Station P will be compared with in situ data from that station. Lidar data from the North Atlantic will be compared with in situ data from the 2008 North Atlantic Bloom Experiment. The second lidar is the NASA airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL). Data from the SABOR field campaign will be used to compare HSRL data with the extensive in situ data set collected during that campaign. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of the HSRL technique will be investigated. The third lidar is the NOAA Airborne Oceanographic Lidar, for which extensive data exist from 17 years of field measurements. This lidar is similar to the CALIOP, except that it has much finer depth resolution in the ocean.
More details may be found in the following project profile(s):
