Satellite ocean color measurement is 10 years old this year. The Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) was launched on the Nimbus-7 satellite in October, 1978, as a 1-year proof-of-concept mission. CZCS measured reflected sunlight at 443, 520, 550, 670 and 750 nm and infrared emissions at 11.5 um, across a swath 2200 km wide and with a spatial resolution (pixel size) at nadir of 0.8 km2. CZCS produced data until summer, 1986, when technical problems with the instrument forced an end to the mission. During the past 10 years, engineers, physicists, optical oceanographers, phytoplankton ecologists and physiologists, numerical modelers and others worked together to develop the methods and procedures for incorporating CZCS imagery into mainstream oceanography. Progress has not been easy and technical problems still remain. However, many oceanographers now feel that satellite ocean color measurements are an essential, if not indispensable, component of oceanographic field experiments. This is especially true of the U.S. Global Ocean Flux Study (GOFS) and other initiatives that are developing under the multi -agency U.S. Global Ocean Science Program (U.S. GOSP Interagency Working Group, 1987) and its international analogues.

Yoder, J.A., W.E. Esaias, G.C. Feldman, and C.R. McClain. 1988. Satellite ocean color—Status report. Oceanography 1(1):18, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1988.34.

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