Primary Production Data from MODIS in the Australian Region

Full description

Ocean net primary production (ONPP) is defined as the rate of inorganic carbon uptake into the ocean biosphere, minus respiration. Biological processes, chiefly photosynthesis, can remove carbon from the dissolved inorganic ocean reservoir, providing an important potential sink for atmospheric carbon. This carbon flux into the ocean biosphere constitutes the base of the pelagic marine food web, directly affecting fishery productivity (Behrenfeld et al., 2002). As part of the Earth Observing System (EOS) science activities at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is applying models to remote sensing data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), aboard the Terra and the Aqua spacecraft, to compute two indices of ONPP. The key model input data for the ONPP models are 8 day (weekly) composite averages of the MODIS semi-analytic chlorophyll product (Chlor_a_3) and the MODIS daytime sea surface temperature (D1) in Integerized Sinusoidal Equal Area Grid (ISEAG) projection, at 4.63 km resolution. Both models also use photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) is derived from surface incident short-wave surface flux estimates provided by NASA's Data Assimilation Office (DAO). The PAR, which is provided in one degree, unprojected global observations for every 3 hours, is averaged over the MODIS weekly period of eight days. For the P2 model only, daily synoptic mixed-layer depth (MLD) at one degree resolution is provided by the U.S. Navy's Fleet Numeric Meteorology and Oceanography Center, and also averaged to the MODIS weekly period. This was extracted from http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/atbd/atbd_mod19.pdf being the parts relevant to the 4km mapped modis monthly mean chlorophyll, K_90, suspended solids and sea surface temperature data. MODIS datasest are routinely recalibrated as data collection algorithms and seasonal biases are refined by NASA over time.

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned

Statement: The source of the data was the MODIS website, http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data. Data was then used to create ascii files containing means and variances for each month which in turn were used to create arcinfo grids.