Chlorophyll

Global Map Chlorophyll Image 1 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 2 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 3 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 4 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 5 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 6 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 7 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 8 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 9 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 10 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 11 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 12 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 13 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 14 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 15 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 16 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 17 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 18 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 19 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 20 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 21 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 22 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 23 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 24 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 25 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 26 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 27 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 28 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 29 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 30 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 31 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 32 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 33 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 34 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 35 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 36 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 37 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 38 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 39 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 40 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 41 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 42 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 43 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 44 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 45 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 46 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 47 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 48 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 49 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 50 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 51 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 52 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 53 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 54 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 55 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 56 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 57 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 58 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 59 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 60 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 61 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 62 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 63 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 64 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 65 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 66 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 67 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 68 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 69 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 70 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 71 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 72 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 73 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 74 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 75 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 76 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 77 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 78 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 79 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 80 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 81 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 82 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 83 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 84 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 85 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 86 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 87 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 88 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 89 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 90 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 91 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 92 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 93 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 94 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 95 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 96 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 97 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 98 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 99 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 100 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 101 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 102 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 103 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 104 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 105 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 106 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 107 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 108 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 109 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 110 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 111 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 112 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 113 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 114 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 115 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 116 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 117 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 118 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 119 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 120 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 121 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 122 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 123 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 124 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 125 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 126 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 127 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 128 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 129 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 130 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 131 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 132 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 133 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 134 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 135 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 136 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 137 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 138 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 139 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 140 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 141 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 142 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 143 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 144 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 145 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 146 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 147 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 148 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 149 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 150 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 151 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 152 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 153 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 154 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Chlorophyll Image 185 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 186 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 187 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 188 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 189 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 190 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 191 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 192 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 193 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 194 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 195 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 196 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 197 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 198 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 199 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 200 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 201 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 202 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 203 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 204 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 205 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 206 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 207 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 208 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 209 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 210 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 211 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 212 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 213 Global Map Chlorophyll Image 214 Global Map 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Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll Scale

At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton. Like plants on land, phytoplankton use chlorophyll and other light-harvesting pigments to carry out photosynthesis, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce sugars for fuel. Chlorophyll in the water changes the way it reflects and absorbs sunlight, allowing scientists to map the amount and location of phytoplankton. These measurements give scientists valuable insights into the health of the ocean environment, and help scientists study the ocean carbon cycle.

These chlorophyll maps show milligrams of chlorophyll per cubic meter of seawater each month. Places where chlorophyll amounts were very low, indicating very low numbers of phytoplankton are blue. Places where chlorophyll concentrations were high, meaning many phytoplankton were growing, are dark green. The observations come from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite. Land is dark gray, and places where MODIS could not collect data because of sea ice, polar darkness, or clouds are light gray.

The highest chlorophyll concentrations, where tiny surface-dwelling ocean plants are thriving, are in cold polar waters or in places where ocean currents bring cold water to the surface, such as around the equator and along the shores of continents. It is not the cold water itself that stimulates the phytoplankton. Instead, the cool temperatures are often a sign that the water has welled up to the surface from deeper in the ocean, carrying nutrients that have built up over time. In polar waters, nutrients accumulate in surface waters during the dark winter months when plants can't grow. When sunlight returns in the spring and summer, the plants flourish in high concentrations.

A band of cool, plant-rich waters circles the globe at the Equator, with the strongest signal in the Atlantic Ocean and the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. This zone of enhanced phytoplankton growth comes from the frequent upwelling of cooler, deeper water as a result of the dominant easterly trade winds blowing across the ocean surface. In many coastal areas, the rising slope of the sea floor pushes cold water from the lowest layers of the ocean to the surface. The rising, or upwelling water carries iron and other nutrients from the ocean floor. Cold coastal upwelling and subsequent phytoplankton growth are most evident along the west coasts of North and South America and southern Africa.

View, download, or analyze more of these data from NASA Earth Observations (NEO):
Chlorophyll