Training Resource Description
This video is from the 2023 ‘Satellite-based tools for investigating aquatic ecosystems’ online training course. The course was co-organised by ESA as part of a training programme with the Trevor Platt Science Foundation.
This training video provides an in-depth introduction to ocean colour remote sensing, focusing on how sunlight interacts with substances in water and how this interaction affects the colour of the ocean. It explains the principles of light absorption, scattering, and reflection, and how these processes are used to detect and quantify water constituents like chlorophyll-a, suspended particles, and coloured dissolved organic matter. The lecture details key optical properties, algorithms used to estimate chlorophyll-a from satellite data (especially the blue-green ratio), and the importance of atmospheric correction for retrieving accurate measurements. It also highlights the main satellite sensors used for ocean colour observation (e.g., MODIS, Sentinel-3, SeaWiFS), discusses different types of algorithms (empirical, semi-analytical, and spectral fitting), and introduces tools and data levels involved in EO processing. The session emphasizes the role of chlorophyll-a as a key indicator of phytoplankton biomass and marine ecosystem health, and explains how ocean colour products support long-term monitoring of biological and biogeochemical processes in the ocean.