NASA: Iceland Sea in Bloom - 23.07.13
Posted by Ricardo Marcenaro | Posted in NASA: Iceland Sea in Bloom - 23.07.13 | Posted on 13:20
acquired July 6, 2012
download large image (276 KB, JPEG, 1200x1600)
The waters off Iceland rank among the world’s most productive fisheries. The reason for the abundance is an ample supply of phytoplankton,
the base of the marine food chain. Like any plant, microscopic
phytoplankton need sunlight and nutrients to survive. Iceland’s coastal
waters offer both during the long days of summer.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua
satellite acquired this image of a large phytoplankton bloom on July 6,
2013. The range of colors from milky blue to green suggests that a
range of different species make up this bloom, most likely including
diatoms and perhaps chalky white coccolithophores, says Sergio
Signorini, an ocean scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Floating in the water, phytoplankton act like tracers, revealing the course of mixing currents
and the swirling eddies where they clash. A branch of the North
Atlantic Current (the Gulf Stream) flows north bringing warm Atlantic
water to mix with cold Arctic currents circling in from the east.
The high value of Iceland’s fisheries ensures that these are
well-studied waters. Comparisons of phytoplankton growth from the 1950s
to the present shows that the waters northeast of Iceland aren’t
generally as productive as those to the southwest. Some of the plankton
in this bloom may have formed to the south and drifted north on the
currents, says Signorini. MODIS images from July 6 show an extensive bloom extending from the North Sea near Denmark to this location northeast of Iceland.
Reference
- Gudmundsson, K. (1998). Long-term variations in phytoplankton productivity during spring in Icelandic waters. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 55:635-643. Accessed July 10, 2013.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
- Instrument:
- Aqua - MODIS
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