OCEAN Project: the European archive of CZCS historical data

Optical observations of the marine environment have been increasingly used to provide a novel look at a score of bio-geo-chemical and physical process es of the sea. A considerable time series of such data was collected by the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) on board the satellite Nimbus-7, from la te 1978 to early 1986. In order to exploit this historical dataset, the Oce an Colour European Archive Network (OCEAN) project-a joint initiative of th e Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) and the Europ ean Space Agency (ESA)-has performed a thorough reappraisal of all (about 1 8 000) CZCS scenes covering marine regions of European concern. The Project had the specific aims of generating a European ocean colour database from the historical CZCS series, promoting its use in an Application Demonstrati on Programme (ADP) for selected regions, and last, but not least, developin g in Europe a 'network' of scientific groups and facilities in support of c urrent research activities and future space missions. In approaching these tasks, the Project developed specific software tools, integrated into a sys tem named OCEANcode, for the operational processing and management of ocean colour data. Current system developments include tools devoted to the pre- processing of all CZCS data available in Europe (level-l data), and the gen eration of appropriate quick-look images; the processing of all suitable da ta to the final geophysical parameters of interest (level-2 data), by means of algorithms for calibration, atmospheric correction, and pigment concent ration derivation; the generation of time series, mosaics and statistical i mages of such parameters (level-3 data), via image geographic registration, coastal feature matching, and statistical compositing. The OCEAN archives have found applications in a number of studies concerning environmental iss ues of the European marginal and enclosed seas.