Remotely sensed primary production in the western Ross Sea:results of in situ tuned models

[摘要] The Southern Ocean plays an important role in the global carbon cycle and, as a consequence, inthe planetary climate equilibrium. The Ross Sea is one of the more productive regions in the SouthernOcean, due to strong phytoplankton blooms occurring during summer. Satellite remote sensing is a powerfultool for investigating such phenomena, especially if the bio-optical algorithms are tuned with in situ data. Inthis paper, after having compared the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) and the ENEALidar Fluorosensor (ELF), the SeaWiFS chlorophyll a (Chl a) algorithm is tuned in the Ross Sea by meansof the ELF measurements. The Chl a concentrations obtained in this way have been the basis for estimatingproductivity values and their evolution during summer 1997–98. Three primary production models havebeen used, providing information on their accuracy and performance in the Antarctic environment. Ourinvestigations suggest that the primary production was lower than usual during the period 3 December1997–16 January 1998.

[学科分类] 自然科学（综合）