West Coast Time Series Coastal Zone Color Scanner Pigment Concentration from the NIMBUS-7

The Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) on Nimbus-7 was designed for the
quantitative remote sensing of the bio-optical properties of marine waters
by measuring the visible spectral signatures of the sea. The CZCS has six
spectral channels and five visible channels sensing solar backscattered
radiance and one infrared channel sensing emitted thermal radiance. The CZCS
measured radiances are used to map chlorophyll concentration, suspended
sediment distribution, and temperatures of coastal waters and open ocean. For
more information see Supplementary Information on the MD main menu.

After critical atmospheric corrections are applied, the radiances measure the
concentration of chlorophyll pigments in the surface waters, and by empirical
correlation, one can derive ocean productivity.

The West Coast Time Series (WCTS) project generated a time series of
coregistered pigment concentration and sea surface temperature (from the AVHRR
sensor). The time coverage is from 1978 - 1986. The temporal resolution is
484.84 scans per minute. Coverage is over the region from 20N-55N and from
105W-140W. The spatial resolution is 1.1km.

The products include 'tile' images, fully corrected, of pigment concentration
(512x512 pixels), 'mosaic' images, which are aggregations of tiles, and 'clou
images, which are on the same scale as the mosaics. These are used to assess
the cloud cover over the CZCS pass. Accuracy of the estimate of chlorophyll
concentration is to within 1/3 unit on a logarithmic scale, (3dB), but it
depends on environmental conditions.

The data from 1979-1986 are available on magnetic tape from Dr. Mark Abbott,
School of Oceanography, Oregon State University.