Assessment of the CMEMS phytoplankton functional types products for inter-mission consistency

In the framework of Copernicus Marine Service Evolution Program, our current project GLOPHYTS aims at establishing a complete and systematic approach for a consistent long-term monitoring of surface ocean phytoplankton function types (PFTs) on global scale. The current global PFT products available on CMEMS are generated based on remote sensing reflectance from multi-sensor merged and Sentinel-3 OLCI data and OSTIA sea surface temperature product, using a set of empirical-orthogonal-function based PFT algorithms that were previously developed. These products provide global chlorophyll a data with per-pixel uncertainty for six PFTs spanning from 2002 until today. Aiming to merge these PFT data sets of different sensors into one long-term consistent satellite PFT product, as first steps we focus on the (inter-)calibration of the sensor specific PFT products using in-situ validation, cross-comparison and uncertainty estimation in different biogeochemical regions. The final continuous PFT observations will act as potentially important ocean monitoring indicators (OMI) to help sustain the ocean health by providing inter-annual variation and trend analyses of the surface phytoplankton community structure.