Products
NRT Service
The Near Real Time (NRT) Service provides CoastColour data products processed to L1P and L2 as soon as the MERIS FRS L1B is made available by ESA. After a product has been processed it will remain available online for 2 weeks.
Data Archive
The CoastColour data archive contains, for all 27 sites and for the years 2005 to 2009, L1P data products. For 2006 also L2R and L2W data products are available. For the sites Benguela (Site 10), ChinaKoreaJapan (Site 11), and Rio La Plata (Site 27) L2 data is available processed with especially trained neural nets for high TSM and standard TSM.
The data archive will be updated and extended by end of March 2012. This update will include:
- The timeline will be extended by 2010
- Level 2 data will be processed for all sites
- Multiple improvements to the algorithms used in the processing of L1P, L2R, and L2W data products
Data Access
The access to the data archive and NRT data is free and open. You can use the direct web access, which is good for downloading only a few data products. If you like to download more than just a couple of products, we kindly ask you to register for getting access to the FTP server. After registration, which is free of charge, a username and password will be sent to you.
Product Description
The Level 1P product is a refined top of atmosphere radiance product compared with the standard Level 1b product. It will provide improved geolocation and calibration, equalisation to reduce coherent noise, smile correction, pixel characterization information (cloud, snow, etc.), a precise coastline and a reformatting into NetCDF following Climate Forecast (CF) conventions.
The Level L2R product is the result of the atmospheric correction. It contains water leaving reflectance, normalised water leaving reflectance and different information about atmospheric properties.
The L2W product provides information about water properties such as IOPs, concentrations and other variables. It also contains an ortho-corrected geo-coding and different flags characterizing pixels.
The following table gives an overview of the product structure. A dataset is physically represented by one single NetCDF product file.
| Dataset |
Group of Variables |
Contents |
Status (June 2011) |
L1P |
TOA |
Pre-processed MERIS TOA radiances. |
Available |
GEO |
Ortho-corrected geo-coding. |
Available |
FLAGS |
Flags characterising pixels |
Available |
L2R |
RSURF |
Contains water leaving reflectances, normalised water leaving reflectances, aerosol optical depth and angstrom exponent.
Using the BEAM CoastColour Processor the user can add other variables (currently not publicly available) |
Available |
GEO |
Ortho-corrected geo-coding. |
Available |
FLAGS |
Flags characterising pixels |
Available |
L2W |
IOP |
IOPs and optical water properties |
Available |
CONC |
Concentration retrieval products (CHL, TSM, CDOM). |
Available |
OTH |
Other water properties |
Available |
PAR |
Photosynthetic active radiation. |
Not available |
FLH |
Fluorescence line height. |
Not available |
EXP |
Experimental L2 products |
Not available |
GEO |
Ortho-corrected geo-coding. |
Available |
FLAGS |
Flags characterising pixels |
Available |
The following lists explain in detail the content of the dataset.
Standard products
The CoastColour products will include a set of basic quantities which will be generated over all sites:
Acronym* |
Product |
Dataset |
Group of variables |
Surface reflectances
| L2R |
RSURF |
reflec |
Directional water leaving radiance reflectance |
|
|
norm_reflec |
Fully normalized water leaving radiance reflectance |
|
|
Inherent optical properties
|
L2W |
IOP |
a_total |
Total absorption coefficient of all water constituents |
|
|
b_total |
Total scattering or backscattering coefficient |
|
|
A_pig |
Phytoplankton pigment absorption coefficient |
|
|
A_ys |
Yellow substance absorption coefficient |
|
|
A_poc |
Absorption by particulate organic matter |
|
|
Water constituent concentrations
|
L2W |
CONC |
conc_chl |
Chlorophyll a concentration |
|
|
conc_tsm |
Total suspended matter |
|
|
Water transparency/turbidity information
|
L2W |
OTH |
Kd |
Spectral downwelling irradiance attenuation coefficient |
|
|
Z90_max |
Maximal signal depth |
|
|
Z_eu |
Depth of euphotic layer |
|
|
Z_SD |
Secchi disc depth |
|
|
turbidity |
Formazin Nepholometric Units |
|
|
Chlorophyll Indices
|
L2W |
FLH |
FLH |
Fluorescence line height |
|
|
MCI |
Maximum chlorophyll index |
|
|
(*) - used in CoastColour products
Experimental products
An attempt will be made to generate additional experimental, site specific products, including (provisional list):
Acronym* |
Product |
Algorithm |
|
1% depth of PAR |
|
PPP |
Primary Productivity or Potential Primary Productivity |
requires the knowledge of PI parameters, PPP is without nutrient limitations |
|
Phytoplankton Biomass estimates in gC m-3 or gC m-2 units |
|
|
Concentrations of some taxonomic of functional groups such as coccolithophorides, Cyanobacteria etc |
if abundant in dominating concentrations |
|
Effective Fluorescence |
Derived from difference of water leaving radiance reflectance between direct output of neural network and difference between top of atmosphere reflectance (RLtoa) and path radiance reflectance (RLpath). |
(*) - used in CoastColour products
