PACE OCI Level-2: Regional Ocean Biogeochemical Properties

PACE OCI Level-2 Regional Ocean Biogeochemical Properties Data provides satellite-derived biogeochemical properties of the upper ocean from the PACE_OCI instrument. The Ocean Color Biogeochemical suite characterizes carbon pools and ecosystem status. Geophysical variables include phytoplankton carbon biomass, chlorophyll-a concentration, and particulate organic carbon.

Use Cases

• Modeling phytoplankton carbon biomass based on satellite-derived carbon_phyto measurements.
• Assessing ocean ecosystem health based on chlorophyll-a concentration (chlor_a).
• Estimating carbon export potential based on particulate organic carbon (poc) data.
• Quality filtering satellite data products using the Level-2 processing flags (l2_flags).

Strengths

• Provides specific geophysical variables including carbon_phyto, chlor_a, and poc.
• Includes standard uncertainty estimates for key variables like carbon_phyto_unc and chlor_a_unc.
• Derived from calibrated, atmospherically corrected ocean-color inputs from the PACE_OCI satellite.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count, file formats, and data size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

OB_CLOUD via nasa_earthdata

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing from the PACE_OCI instrument.

Geography

Regional ocean coverage.