Several GESTAR II members authors of PACE paper in RSE

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 15:45:29 -0500
gestar2

The paper "Phytoplankton composition from sPACE: Requirements, opportunities, and challenges," published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment, is currently available online, prior to publication in March 2024. The lead author and co-authors include many GESTAR II members from NASA GSFC Code 616, Ocean Ecology Laboratory: Ivona Cetinic' (616/MSU), Ian Carroll (616/UMBC), Inia Soto Ramos (616/MSU), Bridget Seegers (616/MSU), James Allen (now with 616/MSU), and Violeta Sanjuan Calzado (616/UMBC). The informative paper is about NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Clouds, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, the first global ocean and atmosphere hyperspectral mission, which is scheduled to launch February 6, 2024.

"In this paper, we analyze the needs of the user community, review existing approaches for detecting phytoplankton community composition in situ and from space, and highlight the benefits that the PACE mission will bring. Using this three-pronged approach, we highlight the challenges and gaps to be addressed by the community going forward, while offering a vision of what global phytoplankton community composition will look like through the "eyes" of PACE."

Within the paper, the authors include a discussion of the hyperspectral imaging radiometer, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), as well as the roles of the two polarimeters, HARP2 and SPEXone; all three instruments are onboard the spacecraft. HARP2 (Hyper Angular Research Polarimeter) was developed by UMBC's Earth and Space Institute.