Underwater light field changes in Pärnu Bay influenced by weather phenomena and captured by Sentinel-3

Climate change is expected to continue in the 21st century, but the magnitude of change depends on future actions. In the Baltic Sea, specifically in the Pärnu Bay region, this is predicted to mean warmer temperatures, less ice cover, more precipitations and a slight increase in average wind speed, furthermore extreme climatic events such as heavy rains, strong winds and storms will be more intense and frequent. The coastal waters play a central role in humans and nature's everyday lives as providing food, living and recreational opportunities. Since Pärnu Bay is one of the most eutrophied area in the Baltic Sea and provides living hood more the 800 fishermen, then regular monitoring is strongly recommended, but with traditional methods often unfeasible. The availability of free Sentinel satellites data with good spectral, spatial and temporal resolution has generated wide interest in how to use remote sensing capabilities to monitor coastal waters water quality, which affects the underwater light field and can lead even to changes in fish composition. However, these waters are optically complex and influenced independently by coloured dissolved organic matter, phytoplankton and an amount of suspended sediments. Therefore, the remote sensing of optically complex waters is more challenging, and standard remote sensing products often fail. In this study, we use satellite Sentinel-3 data to investigate weather phenomena as strong wind and precipitations effect to Pärnu Bay water quality parameters. We study the spatial and temporal scope of change of water quality parameters after the event. For that, we use optical water type classification based chlorophyll-a, suspended sediments and coloured dissolved organic matter algorithms on Sentinel-3 images and estimate underwater light field changes. Furthermore, we also use in situ data to analyses the frequency and the strength of weather events. Finally, we look at the composition of fish based on literature and we investigate the possible effects of the change of the underwater light field on fish composition.