Geostationary Ocean Colour demonstration products

This study has two main objectives: to advance SEVIRI and FCI ocean colour developments around algorithms and products, and to implement them in a multi-mission prototype processor in order to achieve early demonstration and user engagement.

Satellite Ocean Colour observations have been conventionally performed from polar orbits. Nevertheless, the benefits of Ocean Colour from geostationary platforms have been well documented by the community. Currently, pioneering dedicated missions from Korea are in orbit (GOCI and GOCI-II) and future geostationary missions are planned by a number of space agencies. EUMETSAT operates the geostationary satellite series Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), which carry the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imagers (SEVIRI), and will soon operate Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) with Flexible Combined Imagers (FCI). SEVIRI and FCI have not been developed to specifically consider ocean colour requirements. In spite of this, there has been a significant interest in exploiting SEVIRI and FCI for Ocean Colour applications. Initial algorithms have been developed by the community and by an early EUMETSAT study to provide water turbidity and related parameters from SEVIRI and to explore FCI capabilities for additional ocean colour parameters, such as chlorophyll concentrations. This study builds on these developments and provides significant scientific improvement, additional water parameters, and prototype implementation.

Objectives

The study’s objectives are to:

• Develop prototype processing for retrieval of highest-possible quality geostationary Ocean Colour products from SEVIRI and FCI for open ocean, coastal and in-land water coverage, with defined SEVIRI open ocean limitations.
• Embed the SEVIRI and FCI processing in the multi-mission modules of EUMETSAT’s existing ocean colour prototype processor.
• GEO-OC User Consultation Workshop, 7–8 December 2023, at EUMETSAT headquarters and online (invitation and agenda)

Overview

The study follows EUMETSAT’s initial SEVIRI activity in 2015/2016, which defined user requirements for water turbidity and related ocean colour geostationary products. The 2015/2016 activity has also defined the SEVIRI ocean colour algorithm to perform the atmospheric correction and to retrieve water remote sensing reflectance, Rrs at the two SEVIRI’s VIS and NIR bands, and water turbidity. The study has provided SEVIRI’s ocean colour prototype processor, as well as product quality specifications and validation results.