Although this report is old, the archive is being updated about weekly...

Cloud cover presents an obvious challenge to remote sensing efforts in the North Atlantic, but we have managed to get a handful of clear images. The recent Aqua MODIS chlorophyll image from 24-April shows some incredible mesoscale variability and suggests that the bloom is indeed underway (especially if you compare this image to one from 10-days earlier on 14-April).

24-April 2004 (online album)

10-April 2004 (online album)

It appears that Float #48 is currently near a strong front in chlorophyll which may explain some of the variability seen by Eric D'Asaro in the recent fluorescence data from the float.

If you follow either of the links above you will notice that I have posted a new online album of satellite images in order to make it easier for people to work with the standard mapped data products. The front page to the album is located at:

http://www.mbari.org/staff/sackmann/nab08/album/index.html

Currently I am processing the following suite of products (if you would like additional products mapped/posted please let me know):

Aqua MODIS Chlorophyll

Aqua MODIS Sea Surface Temperature

QuikBird QuikScat Wind Speed and Direction

Aqua AMSR-E Sea Surface Temperature (evaluation product)

Aqua AMSR-E Rain Rate (evaluation product)

--MODIS data are obtained from NASA's OceanColor WEB

--QuikScat data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NASA Ocean Vector Winds Science Team. Data are available at www.remss.com .

--AMSR-E data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NASA Earth Science REASoN DISCOVER Project and the AMSR-E Science Team. Data are available at www.remss.com .

The online album can be used to browse the image collection (organized with reverse chronology so the most recent images appear first) and it also includes links for each image that allow them to be viewed in Google Maps. The Google Maps interface will allow you to visualize the location of the in-water assets on top of any given satellite image.

The help file for the online album will show you some shortcuts for navigating the image collection:

http://www.mbari.org/staff/sackmann/nab08/album/help.html

Of particular interest is the fact that each image in the album is encoded as a clickable image map. If you want to download the high-resolution .PNG version of an image (similar to what is attached to this Mission Report) just click on the lower-middle section of the image and it will display the full-resolution version in a separate window which can then be downloaded to your computer.

The current plan is to update the online album on a weekly basis (unless more frequent updates are requested).