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Ocean Optics News

Articles, resources, and announcements from Ocean Optics.
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Icebergs circulate in the South Atlantic Ocean currents near the island of South Georgia. Around them, phytoplankton is blooming, creating large green-tinted swirls in this NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) acquired on January 5, 2025.

Discover the Help Hub for Ocean Color Learning Resources

The Help Hub hosted by NASA's Ocean Biology Distributed Active Archive Center (OB.DAAC) has been updated with new learning resources for processing ocean color satellite data, working with Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) data, and more.
News
This rectangular image shows phytoplankton levels along Florida and the East Coast of the United States, the Bahamas, and Cuba. Land is colored in muted shades of brown and green, water is dark blue, and snow is white. Nearshore are bands of light to dark green depicting picoeukaryote organism levels. Further out to sea are regions in variations of light blue showing the presences of prochlorococcus cyanobacteria.

New PACE Data Tutorials

A series of Jupyter notebook tutorials show how to retrieve and use data from NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission.
News
image of ocean color data layer in NASA Worldview

Worldview Adds 15 New Data Layers

New ocean color, nighttime lights, corrected reflectance, and other layers have been added to Worldview's extensive catalog of satellite imagery.
News
This is an image showing simulated chlorophyll concentrations in the ocean on March 21, 2022. The image has a black background. Regions colored in blue represent areas of low chlorophyll concentration, green are medium, and red areas have high levels. The image has strips of black running through the colored areas from the upper left to the lower right to show PACE’s orbital track around the globe and places across the ocean where it has not scanned.

Preparing for PACE Data

Simulated data help Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) users prepare a day in the life of the new satellite.
Feature Article
Wearing a wet suit and a life vest, Dr. James Allen poses for a photo on the deck of a ship in the North Atlantic prior to dropping a sensor into the water.

Dr. James G. Allen

NASA Earth science data help scientists like Dr. James G. Allen develop processes for better satellite retrievals of ocean parameters.
Data User Story
Blue rectangle with word SEADAS in white with a small square next to it overlain on a data image showing a land mass and ocean with colored data in the water

Data Tool in Focus: SeaDAS

The SeaDAS software application lets users process, visualize, and analyze NASA ocean color and other data products.
Feature Article
Headshot of Dr. Brice Grunert, assistant professor at Cleveland State University who uses data from the OB.DAAC and other sources in his research on carbon cycling in the ocean

Dr. Brice Grunert

Data from NASA’s OB.DAAC help scientists like Dr. Brice Grunert understand the processes governing carbon cycling in Earth’s ocean.
Data User Story
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