MERIS acquired this image on 7 May 2008, working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m.

Globally, phytoplankton are a major influence on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and hence need to be modelled into calculations of future climate change. Just like land-based plants, they accumulate carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and store it in their tissues, making them potentially important carbon sinks.

To support ocean carbon cycle research, ESA's GlobColour project has merged 55 terabytes of data from three state-of-the-art instruments aboard different satellites, including MERIS, MODIS aboard NASA's Aqua and SeaWiFS aboard GeoEye's Orbview-2, to produce a 10-year dataset of global ocean colour stretching from 1997 to 2007.

The ocean colour datasets are freely available to the public via the GlobColour website.

GlobColour Project
European Node for Global Ocean Colour
The GlobColour project is demonstrating an EO based service supporting global ocean carbon cycle research.
Through this web portal, the project provides scientists with a long time series of consistently calibrated global ocean colour information.

http://www.globcolour.info/