I'm working on a project for my highschool, and I have to find data to figure out my research questions: How do changes in ocean surface current speed and surface temperature influence chlorophyll a concentration (varied between 0.01 and 100 µg/L) in the North Atlantic over a time period of 6 weeks?
How do I find this data to look at for everyday for the 6 weeks?
Ocean Current's Affect on Chlorophyll-A in the North Atlantic
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Re: Ocean Current's Affect on Chlorophyll-A in the North Atlantic
Hi -- I'm going to comment on your post and suggest that you can use our Giovanni tool, https://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/ for your project. The parameters of the project are somewhat vague; is this about any 6-week period in the year, or a specific 6-week period? The spring season in the North Atlantic is particularly dynamic. And the area influenced by the Gulf Stream, both the current itself and the region to the north, is more variable than the region south of the Gulf Stream.
Giovanni gets chlorophyll and SST data from the OBDAAC, which provides global mapped data from the MODIS-Aqua instrument in both 8-day and monthly average products. For each of these products, the data are averaged from the number of views of the ocean surface the instrument gets during the period. Because of clouds, in most areas of the ocean it's difficult to get a view of the surface every day, so the 8-day products are a useful temporal resolution. Also, ocean conditions don't change or move as fast as atmospheric conditions, so 8-day intervals are fairly good to capture changes.
Ocean current data products can be obtained from the PODAAC. You might also wish to consider wind data products, because the wind will affect surface currents (though the general flow of the Gulf Stream isn't significantly affected by winds). Giovanni has wind speed and wind direction data products.
I hope this information will help to get you started. Giovanni has a User Guide in the Help section that will assist getting you familiar with how it works.
Giovanni gets chlorophyll and SST data from the OBDAAC, which provides global mapped data from the MODIS-Aqua instrument in both 8-day and monthly average products. For each of these products, the data are averaged from the number of views of the ocean surface the instrument gets during the period. Because of clouds, in most areas of the ocean it's difficult to get a view of the surface every day, so the 8-day products are a useful temporal resolution. Also, ocean conditions don't change or move as fast as atmospheric conditions, so 8-day intervals are fairly good to capture changes.
Ocean current data products can be obtained from the PODAAC. You might also wish to consider wind data products, because the wind will affect surface currents (though the general flow of the Gulf Stream isn't significantly affected by winds). Giovanni has wind speed and wind direction data products.
I hope this information will help to get you started. Giovanni has a User Guide in the Help section that will assist getting you familiar with how it works.