OceanX 2025: In-Situ Ocean Optics for PACE Satellite Validation

NASA's 2025 OceanX campaign collected a suite of state-of-the-art in-water measurements coinciding with the second year of the PACE satellite mission. Field data includes ocean optical properties, phytoplankton pigments, organic carbon, and aerosol measurements across diverse water types from the Indian Ocean to the eastern Atlantic. This dataset provides crucial in-situ validation to ensure the accuracy of satellite-derived ocean color and biogeochemical data products.

Use Cases

• Validating PACE satellite ocean color data products based on coincident in-situ radiometry measurements.
• Analyzing phytoplankton community composition and biomass based on pigment and physiology measurements.
• Studying the relationship between aerosol measurements and ocean optical properties in diverse marine environments.
• Modeling carbon cycling in the ocean based on measurements of organic carbon concentrations.
• Assessing satellite algorithm performance across water types from clear blue ocean to turbid nearshore.

Strengths

• Data collection was timed to coincide with the second year of NASA's PACE mission, enabling direct satellite validation.
• Measurements span diverse water types from low to high productivity, covering clear blue ocean, algal-rich coastal ocean, and turbid nearshore.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, specific column names, and file sizes are not provided on any platform.
• License information is inconsistently reported as 'other-license-specified' on some platforms and 'None' on others.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA GSFC/OEL/FSG and PVST) in collaboration with OceanX.

Collection Method

Collected during the OceanX 2025 campaign aboard the OceanXplorer research vessel.

Time Range

2025

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-09 according to datagov.

Geography

Indian Ocean and eastern Atlantic Ocean.