JPSS VIIRS Ocean Color Products and Applications

In this paper, we provide an overview of the progress on producing accurate global ocean color products from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) and NOAA-20 satellites. SNPP and NOAA-20 were launched on October 28, 2011 and November 18, 2017, respectively. VIIRS global ocean color products include normalized water-leaving radiance spectra nLw(λ) at VIIRS five spectral bands, chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration, water diffuse attenuation coefficients at the wavelength of 490 nm, Kd(490), and at the domain of photosynthetically available radiation (PAR), Kd (PAR). In addition, new products of nLw(λ) at VIIRS I-band (638 nm for SNPP and 642 nm for NOAA-20) and quality assurance (QA) score are now included. VIIRS global ocean color products are being routinely produced using the Multi-Sensor Level-l to Level-2 (MSL12) ocean color data processing system. Specifically, we describe our effort for the improvements of MSL12, particularly over coastal and inland waters, as well as some evaluations with in situ data from the Marine Optical Buoy (MOBY). Furthermore, we provide VIIRS ocean color data from both SNPP and NOAA-20, as well as from merged global Chl-a data from two VIIRS sensors, showing significantly improved data coverage. Some examples from the recently developed data gap-filling technique for VIIRS-SNPP are also presented and discussed.