Nicole Bale Report from the R/V Knorr

The photosynthetic pigment, chlorophyll-a, is the most widely used measure of biological production in the ocean. When free of cellular pigment-protein complexes, chl-a is a labile molecule sensitive to light and is know to form suites of transformation products.

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).

This is a sample ocean color mission report. I am keying off of the "MODIS-Aqua" taxonomy item for now.