First release of the CMEMS Global coastal OLCI 300 meters Chlorophyll-a Product

The Ocean Colour Instrument (OLCI) on-board the Sentinel-3A and 3B satellites with a 300 m spatial resolution has a major advantage compared to other satellite missions with a typical 1 km spatial resolution. The chlorophyll-a product derived from OLCI’s 300 m measurement facilitates many applications in marine and coastal ecology, from ecosystem modeling, to fisheries management, and monitoring of water quality. The OLCI 300 m chlorophyll-a swath data (Level-2) are operationally disseminated in NRT mode by the EUMETSAT agency. The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) eases the usage of these Level-2 (swath data) by providing Level-3 (daily mapped gridded files) at global and regional level.

This study highlights the first release of a 300 m NRT global daily chlorophyll-a product based on the merging of OLCI S3A and S3B. It will be routinely disseminated in the frame of CMEMS in May 2021. Before this date, the resolution of the CMEMS Chlorophyll products was 4km at global level and 1km over some European regional seas This 300 m product will be based on the Copernicus-GlobColour processor already used by CMEMS for the Global chlorophyll-a product and the regional Atlantic daily interpolated product. The daily image will correspond to a large matrix of 32400x64800 pixels with chlorophyll-a data provided along the coastline (200 km). CMEMS provides to the end-user facilities to extract data on his area and period of interest.

This new product will take benefit of a new EUMETSAT’s Level-2 product baseline which should be switched operationally in NRT mode mid-February 2021. This new baseline improves mainly the System Vicarious Calibration (SVC) gains of both S3A and S3B and the associated quality flags. The Chlorophyll-a OC4ME algorithm has been also improved with the use of the Colour Index algorithm for clear water. The assessment of this new OC4ME chlorophyll-a product (based on tandem data) shows a very good correlation between S3A and S3B. A regression between a daily S3A and S3B global product provides a R2 of 0.98 with a respective slope and offset of 1.0 and 0.005. However, some limitations concerning the level-2 upstream products have been identified. Details about the merging procedure, inter-comparison with existing product and illustrations of results will be presented.