Ocean color products from MODIS on Aqua have been routinely derived using the two MODIS near-infrared (NIR) bands (748 and 869 nm) for atmospheric correction with assumption of a black ocean in the NIR for the open ocean and modifications to account for the NIR ocean contributions for productive (but not very turbid) near-shore or coastal waters. For turbid waters in coastal regions, however, the NIR black ocean assumption and modifications are often invalid, leading to errors in the MODIS-derived ocean color products. Based on the fact that waters are strongly absorbing at the shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands compared with that at the NIR bands, an atmospheric correction algorithm using the SWIR bands was proposed and demonstrated to derive significantly improved ocean color products in turbid coastal waters measured by the MODIS-Aqua.
SWIR-based Ocean Color Remote Sensing has extensive applications. This presentation also demonstrates some of its major applications and scientific merits in the follow areas with our recent studies:
- Ocean Color Retrievals in the Turbid Coastal Region
- Coastal Phytoplankton Bloom and Green Algae Bloom
- Coastal and Inland-water Hazard Monitoring
- Long-term Assessments for Coastal and Inland-water Environment
- Ecosystem Response to Major Climate Event
- River Dynamics in the Estuary and River Plume
- Sea Ice Optical Properties and Ice Hazard Monitoring
