Global Ocean Photosynthetically Available Radiation from PACE Satellite

Satellite-derived estimates of daily and instantaneous photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) at the ocean surface, measured in moles of photons per square meter. This NASA Earthdata product provides global mapped data for the 400–700 nm light spectrum, supporting research into marine primary production and phytoplankton dynamics.

Use Cases

• Estimating daily marine primary production rates by integrating the daily 'par' (mol photons m⁻² d⁻¹) variable over time and space.
• Analyzing phytoplankton bloom dynamics by correlating the 'ipar' (instantaneous PAR) feature with concurrent biological measurements.
• Providing light context for in-situ optical measurements by using the mapped PAR fields as a spatial baseline.
• Initializing and validating marine ecosystem models with the gridded 'par' data as a key driver of biological processes.

Strengths

• Provides both daily ('par') and instantaneous ('ipar') radiation estimates for flexible temporal analysis.
• Covers the global ocean surface, enabling basin-scale and regional studies.
• Data is processed to Level-3, indicating mapped and gridded products suitable for spatial analysis.

Limitations

• Specific temporal coverage, spatial resolution, and data volume (row count) are unknown from the input.
• Relies on satellite remote sensing, which can be affected by cloud cover and atmospheric correction errors.
• The 'l2_flags' bitmask requires expert interpretation to filter low-quality data pixels.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata from the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission.

Collection Method

Satellite-based remote sensing estimates derived from ocean color measurements.

Time Range

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Freshness

Near Real-time (NRT) data, implying frequent updates, but exact latency is unknown.

Geography

Global ocean surface.