What do you give to an ocean that has everything? This year, in celebration of National Ocean Month, NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite is giving us a unique look at our home planet. The visualizations created using data from the satellite, which was launched on February 8, are already improving the way we see our seas and skies.
The PACE satellite views our entire planet every day, returning data at a pace that allows scientists to track and monitor the rapidly changing atmosphere and ocean, including cloud formation, aerosol movements and differences in microscopic ocean life over the course of the time.
The visualization begins with a view of parts of the Earth from PACE’s Ocean Color Instrument. The Ocean Color Instrument observes Earth in ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light – more than 200 wavelengths. With this level of detail, scientists can now regularly identify specific communities of phytoplankton from space: small organisms that float near the surface of the ocean and serve as the center of the marine food web. This is a major advance because different types of phytoplankton play different roles in ocean ecosystems and health.
Zooming in, the visualization shows the ecosystems and surrounding atmosphere off the east coast of the United States and the Bahamas on March 21. Like previous satellites, the Ocean Color Instrument can detect chlorophyll in the ocean, which indicates the presence and abundance of phytoplankton. The Ocean Color Instrument contributes to this by allowing scientists to determine the types of phytoplankton present, such as the three different types of phytoplankton identified in the visualization.
The portion of swirls in green indicates the presence of picoeukaryotes, organisms smaller than 0.3 micrometers – 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair. In light blue are prochlorococcus, the smallest known organism that converts sunlight into energy (photosynthesis); they are responsible for a large portion of all photosynthesis that occurs in the ocean. The bright pink part of the bloom indicates synechococcus, a phytoplankton group that can turn the water light pink when many are present in a small area.
These are just three of thousands of phytoplankton species, and just the beginning of what the Ocean Color Instrument will be able to identify.
The PACE satellite’s two polarimeters, Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 (HARP2) and Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration one (SPEXone), provide a unique view of Earth’s atmosphere, helping scientists learn more about clouds and small particles called aerosols. The polarimeters measure the light reflected by these particles. By learning more about the interactions between clouds and aerosols, this data will ultimately help make climate models more accurate. In addition, aerosols can affect air quality, so monitoring their properties and movement is important for human health.
In the visualization, the large amount of HARP2 data shows the concentration of aerosols in the air for that specific day. This data – a measure of the light-scattering and absorbing properties of aerosols – helps scientists not only locate the aerosols, but also identify their type. Near the coast, the aerosols are most likely smoke from fires in the southeastern US. Adding detail to the visualization and science, the thin strip of SPEXone data improves the information by showing the aerosol particle size.
Over the next year, PACE scientists aim to create the first global maps of phytoplankton communities and gain new insights into how fisheries and aquatic resources are responding to Earth’s changing climate.
By means of Erica McNamee
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.