'''DEFINITION''' Oligotrophic subtropical gyres are regions of the ocean with low levels of nutrients required for phytoplankton growth and low levels of surface chlorophyll-a whose concentration can be quantified through satellite observations. The gyre boundary has been defined using a threshold value of 0.15 mg m-3 chlorophyll for the Atlantic gyres (Aiken et al. 2016), and 0.07 mg m-3 for the Pacific gyres (Polovina et al. 2008). The area inside the gyres for each month is computed using monthly chlorophyll data from which the monthly climatology is subtracted to compute anomalies. A gap filling algorithm has been utilized to account for missing data. Trends in the area anomaly are then calculated for the entire study period (September 1997 to December 2020). '''CONTEXT''' Oligotrophic gyres of the oceans have been referred to as ocean deserts (Polovina et al. 2008). They are vast, covering approximately 50% of the Earth’s surface (Aiken et al. 2016). Despite low productivity, these regions contribute significantly to global productivity due to their immense size (McClain et al. 2004). Even modest changes in their size can have large impacts on a variety of global biogeochemical cycles and on trends in chlorophyll (Signorini et al. 2015). Based on satellite data, Polovina et al. (2008) showed that the areas of subtropical gyres were expanding. The Ocean State Report (Sathyendranath et al. 2018) showed that the trends had reversed in the Pacific for the time segment from January 2007 to December 2016. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The trend in the North Atlantic gyre area for the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period was positive, with a 0.39% year-1 increase in area relative to 2000-01-01 values. This trend has decreased compared with the 1997-2019 trend of 0.45%, and is statistically significant (p<0.05). During the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period, the trend in chlorophyll concentration was positive (0.24% year-1) inside the North Atlantic gyre relative to 2000-01-01 values. This time series extension has resulted in a reversal in the rate of change, compared with the -0.18% trend for the 1997-209 period and is statistically significant (p<0.05). '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00226

'''DEFINITION''' Oligotrophic subtropical gyres are regions of the ocean with low levels of nutrients required for phytoplankton growth and low levels of surface chlorophyll-a whose concentration can be quantified through satellite observations. The gyre boundary has been defined using a threshold value of 0.15 mg m-3 chlorophyll for the Atlantic gyres (Aiken et al. 2016), and 0.07 mg m-3 for the Pacific gyres (Polovina et al. 2008). The area inside the gyres for each month is computed using monthly chlorophyll data from which the monthly climatology is subtracted to compute anomalies. A gap filling algorithm has been utilized to account for missing data inside the gyre. Trends in the area anomaly are then calculated for the entire study period (September 1997 to December 2020). '''CONTEXT''' Oligotrophic gyres of the oceans have been referred to as ocean deserts (Polovina et al. 2008). They are vast, covering approximately 50% of the Earth’s surface (Aiken et al. 2016). Despite low productivity, these regions contribute significantly to global productivity due to their immense size (McClain et al. 2004). Even modest changes in their size can have large impacts on a variety of global biogeochemical cycles and on trends in chlorophyll (Signorini et al 2015). Based on satellite data, Polovina et al. (2008) showed that the areas of subtropical gyres were expanding. The Ocean State Report (Sathyendranath et al. 2018) showed that the trends had reversed in the Pacific for the time segment from January 2007 to December 2016. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The trend in the South Altantic gyre area for the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period was positive, with a 0.09% increase in area relative to 2000-01-01 values. Note that this trend is lower than the 0.13% rate for the 1997-2019 trend (though within the uncertainties associated with the two estimates) and is statistically significant (p<0.05). During the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period, the trend in chlorophyll concentration was positive (0.35% year-1) relative to 2000-01-01 values. This is a significant increase from the trend of 0.02% year-1 for the 1997-2019 period. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00228

'''Short description:''' Products ADG (volume absorption coefficient of radiative flux in sea water due to dissolved organic matter and non algal particles), APH (volume absorption coefficient of radiative flux in sea water due to phytoplankton) and ATOT (volume absorption coefficient of radiative flux in sea water) are described in the PML Inherent Optical Property model (Smyth, T.J., Moore, G.F., Hirata, T. Aiken, J. (2006), a semi-analytic model for the derivation of ocean color inherent optical properties. The RRS product is defined as the spectral ratio of upwelling radiance and downwelling irradiance which can also be expressed as the ratio of normalized water leaving Radiance (nLw) and the extra-terrestrial solar irradiance (F0). The KD490 product identifies the turbidity of the water column, i.e., how visible light in the blue-green region of the spectrum penetrates within the water column. It is directly related to the presence of scattering particles in the water column. Inorganic Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) is defined as all inorganic matter that stays on a glass fibre filter with an approximate pore size of 0.7 micrometres. Heavy metals and various organic micropollutants adsorb to SPM, the transport of which can affect the ecosystem. High concentrations of SPM cause turbidity which in turn affects the underwater light conditions, thus influencing primary production by phytoplankton and other algae in coastal waters. Products derived from OLCI are Rrs (400, 412, 443, 490, 510, 560, 620, 665, 674, 681, 709) and KD490. From the CCI multiple-sensor product are derived Rrs (410, 443, 490, 510, 560, 665nm), the Inherent Optical Properties, IOPs (ADG, APH, ATOT) and SPM. These products are remapped at nominal 300m (OLCI) and 1 Km spatial resolution using cylindrical equirectangular projection. '''Description of observation methods/instruments:''' Ocean colour technique exploits the emerging electromagnetic radiation from the sea surface in different wavelengths. The spectral variability of this signal defines the so called ocean colour which is affected by the presence of phytoplankton. By comparing reflectances at different wavelengths and calibrating the result against in-situ measurements, an estimate of in water absorption parameters can be derived. '''DOI (product) :''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00076

'''DEFINITION''' Oligotrophic subtropical gyres are regions of the ocean with low levels of nutrients required for phytoplankton growth and low levels of surface chlorophyll-a whose concentration can be quantified through satellite observations. The gyre boundary has been defined using a threshold value of 0.15 mg m-3 chlorophyll for the Atlantic gyres (Aiken et al. 2016), and 0.07 mg m-3 for the Pacific gyres (Polovina et al. 2008). The area inside the gyres for each month is computed using monthly chlorophyll data from which the monthly climatology is subtracted to compute anomalies. A gap filling algorithm has been utilized to account for missing data. Trends in the area anomaly are then calculated for the entire study period (September 1997 to December 2020). '''CONTEXT''' Oligotrophic gyres of the oceans have been referred to as ocean deserts (Polovina et al. 2008). They are vast, covering approximately 50% of the Earth’s surface (Aiken et al. 2016). Despite low productivity, these regions contribute significantly to global productivity due to their immense size (McClain et al. 2004). Even modest changes in their size can have large impacts on a variety of global biogeochemical cycles and on trends in chlorophyll (Signorini et al 2015). Based on satellite data, Polovina et al. (2008) showed that the areas of subtropical gyres were expanding. The Ocean State Report (Sathyendranath et al. 2018) showed that the trends had reversed in the Pacific for the time segment from January 2007 to December 2016. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The trend in the South Pacific gyre area for the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period was positive, with a 0.16% increase in area relative to 2000-01-01 values. Note that this trend is slightly lower than the 0.24% change for the 1997-2019 period, with the sign of the trend remaining unchanged and is statistically significant (p<0.05). During the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period, the trend in chlorophyll concentration was positive (0.45% year-1) in the South Pacific gyre relative to 2000-01-01 values. This rate is double the rate of 0.15% year-1 for the 1997-2019 period and remains statistically significant (p<0.05). For 2016, the Ocean State Report (Sathyendranath et al. 2018) reported a large increase in gyre area in the Pacific Ocean (both North and South Pacific gyres), probably linked with the 2016 ENSO event which saw large decreases in chlorophyll in the Pacific Ocean. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00229

'''Short description:''' This RRS product is defined as the ratio of upwelling radiance and downwelling irradiance at 412, 443, 490, 510, 560 and 665 nm wavebands (corresponding to MERIS), and can also be expressed as the ratio of normalized water leaving Radiance (nLw) and the extra-terrestrial solar irradiance (F0). The ESA Climate Change Initiative is a 2-part programme aiming to produce “climate quality” merged data records from multiple sensors. The Ocean Colour project within this programme has a primary focus on chlorophyll in open oceans, using the highest quality Rrs merging process to date. This uses a combination of bandshifting to a reference sensor and temporally-weighted bias correction to align independent sensors into a coherent and minimally-biased set of reflectances. These are derived from level 2 data produced by SeaDAS l2gen (SeaWiFS) and Polymer (MODIS, VIIRS, MERIS and OLCI-3A) , and the resulting Rrs bias corrected. '''Processing information:''' ESA-CCI Rrs raw data are provided by Plymouth Marine Laboratory, currently at 4km resolution. These are processed to produce CMEMS representations using the same in-house software as in the operational processing. The entire CCI data set is consistent and processing is done in one go. Both OC CCI and the REP product are versioned. Standard masking criteria for detecting clouds or other contamination factors have been applied during the generation of the Rrs, i.e., land, cloud, sun glint, atmospheric correction failure, high total radiance, large solar zenith angle (70deg), large spacecraft zenith angle (56deg), coccolithophores, negative water leaving radiance, and normalized water leaving radiance at 560 nm 0.15 Wm-2 sr-1 (McClain et al., 1995). For the regional products, a variant of the OC-CCI chain is run to produce high resolution data at the 1km resolution necessary. '''DOI (product) :''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00077

'''DEFINITION''' Oligotrophic subtropical gyres are regions of the ocean with low levels of nutrients required for phytoplankton growth and low levels of surface chlorophyll-a whose concentration can be quantified through satellite observations. The gyre boundary has been defined using a threshold value of 0.15 mg m-3 chlorophyll for the Atlantic gyres (Aiken et al. 2016), and 0.07 mg m-3 for the Pacific gyres (Polovina et al. 2008). The area inside the gyres for each month is computed using monthly chlorophyll data from which the monthly climatology is subtracted to compute anomalies. A gap filling algorithm has been utilized to account for missing data inside the gyre. Trends in the area anomaly are then calculated for the entire study period (September 1997 to December 2020). '''CONTEXT''' Oligotrophic gyres of the oceans have been referred to as ocean deserts (Polovina et al. 2008). They are vast, covering approximately 50% of the Earth’s surface (Aiken et al. 2016). Despite low productivity, these regions contribute significantly to global productivity due to their immense size (McClain et al. 2004). Even modest changes in their size can have large impacts on a variety of global biogeochemical cycles and on trends in chlorophyll (Signorini et al 2015). Based on satellite data, Polovina et al. (2008) showed that the areas of subtropical gyres were expanding. The Ocean State Report (Sathyendranath et al. 2018) showed that the trends had reversed in the Pacific for the time segment from January 2007 to December 2016. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The trend in the North Pacific gyre area for the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period was positive, with a 2.17% increase in area relative to 2000-01-01 values. Note that this trend is slightly lower than the 2.25% reported for the 1997-2019 period (though the small difference is within the uncertainties associated with the two estimates). The trend is statistically significant (p<0.05). During the 1997 Sept – 2020 December period, the trend in chlorophyll concentration was negative (-0.31% year-1) in the North Pacific gyre relative to 2000-01-01 values. This trend is slightly more negative than the trend of -0.25% year-1 for the 1997-2019 period, though the sign of the trend remains unchanged and is statistically significant (p<0.05). For 2016, The Ocean State Report (Sathyendranath et al. 2018) reported a large increase in gyre area in the Pacific Ocean (both North and South Pacific gyres), probably linked with the 2016 ENSO event which saw large decreases in chlorophyll in the Pacific Ocean. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00227

'''DEFINITION''' We have derived an annual eutrophication and eutrophication indicator map for the North Atlantic Ocean using satellite-derived chlorophyll concentration. Using the satellite-derived chlorophyll products distributed in the regional North Atlantic CMEMS REP Ocean Colour dataset (OC- CCI), we derived P90 and P10 daily climatologies. The time period selected for the climatology was 1998-2017. For a given pixel, P90 and P10 were defined as dynamic thresholds such as 90% of the 1998-2017 chlorophyll values for that pixel were below the P90 value, and 10% of the chlorophyll values were below the P10 value. To minimise the effect of gaps in the data in the computation of these P90 and P10 climatological values, we imposed a threshold of 25% valid data for the daily climatology. For the 20-year 1998-2017 climatology this means that, for a given pixel and day of the year, at least 5 years must contain valid data for the resulting climatological value to be considered significant. Pixels where the minimum data requirements were met were not considered in further calculations. We compared every valid daily observation over 2020 with the corresponding daily climatology on a pixel-by-pixel basis, to determine if values were above the P90 threshold, below the P10 threshold or within the [P10, P90] range. Values above the P90 threshold or below the P10 were flagged as anomalous. The number of anomalous and total valid observations were stored during this process. We then calculated the percentage of valid anomalous observations (above/below the P90/P10 thresholds) for each pixel, to create percentile anomaly maps in terms of % days per year. Finally, we derived an annual indicator map for eutrophication levels: if 25% of the valid observations for a given pixel and year were above the P90 threshold, the pixel was flagged as eutrophic. Similarly, if 25% of the observations for a given pixel were below the P10 threshold, the pixel was flagged as oligotrophic. '''CONTEXT''' Eutrophication is the process by which an excess of nutrients – mainly phosphorus and nitrogen – in a water body leads to increased growth of plant material in an aquatic body. Anthropogenic activities, such as farming, agriculture, aquaculture and industry, are the main source of nutrient input in problem areas (Jickells, 1998; Schindler, 2006; Galloway et al., 2008). Eutrophication is an issue particularly in coastal regions and areas with restricted water flow, such as lakes and rivers (Howarth and Marino, 2006; Smith, 2003). The impact of eutrophication on aquatic ecosystems is well known: nutrient availability boosts plant growth – particularly algal blooms – resulting in a decrease in water quality (Anderson et al., 2002; Howarth et al.; 2000). This can, in turn, cause death by hypoxia of aquatic organisms (Breitburg et al., 2018), ultimately driving changes in community composition (Van Meerssche et al., 2019). Eutrophication has also been linked to changes in the pH (Cai et al., 2011, Wallace et al. 2014) and depletion of inorganic carbon in the aquatic environment (Balmer and Downing, 2011). Oligotrophication is the opposite of eutrophication, where reduction in some limiting resource leads to a decrease in photosynthesis by aquatic plants, reducing the capacity of the ecosystem to sustain the higher organisms in it. Eutrophication is one of the more long-lasting water quality problems in Europe (OSPAR ICG-EUT, 2017), and is on the forefront of most European Directives on water-protection. Efforts to reduce anthropogenically-induced pollution resulted in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2000. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Some coastal and shelf waters, especially between 30 and 400N showed active oligotrophication flags for 2020, with some scattered offshore locations within the same latitudinal belt also showing oligotrophication. Eutrophication index is positive only for a small number of coastal locations just north of 40oN, and south of 30oN. In general, the indicator map showed very few areas with active eutrophication flags for 2019 and for 2020. The Third Integrated Report on the Eutrophication Status of the OSPAR Maritime Area (OSPAR ICG-EUT, 2017) reported an improvement from 2008 to 2017 in eutrophication status across offshore and outer coastal waters of the Greater North Sea, with a decrease in the size of coastal problem areas in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00195

'''Short description:''' This RRS product is defined as the ratio of upwelling radiance and downwelling irradiance at 412, 443, 490, 510, 560 and 665 nm wavebands (corresponding to MERIS), and can also be expressed as the ratio of normalized water leaving Radiance (nLw) and the extra-terrestrial solar irradiance (F0). The ESA Climate Change Initiative is a 2-part programme aiming to produce “climate quality” merged data records from multiple sensors. The Ocean Colour project within this programme has a primary focus on chlorophyll in open oceans, using the highest quality Rrs merging process to date. This uses a combination of bandshifting to a reference sensor and temporally-weighted bias correction to align independent sensors into a coherent and minimally-biased set of reflectances. These are derived from level 2 data produced by SeaDAS l2gen (SeaWiFS) and Polymer (MODIS, VIIRS, MERIS and OLCI-3A) , and the resulting Rrs bias corrected. '''Processing information:''' ESA-CCI Rrs raw data are provided by Plymouth Marine Laboratory, currently at 4km resolution. These are processed to produce CMEMS representations using the same in-house software as in the operational processing. The entire CCI data set is consistent and processing is done in one go. Standard masking criteria for detecting clouds or other contamination factors have been applied during the generation of the Rrs, i.e., land, cloud, sun glint, atmospheric correction failure, high total radiance, large solar zenith angle (70deg), large spacecraft zenith angle (56deg), coccolithophores, negative water leaving radiance, and normalized water leaving radiance at 560 nm 0.15 Wm-2 sr-1 (McClain et al., 1995). For the regional products, a variant of the OC-CCI chain is run to produce high resolution data at the 1km resolution necessary. '''Description of observation methods/instruments:''' Ocean colour technique exploits the emerging electromagnetic radiation from the sea surface in different wavelengths. The spectral variability of this signal defines the so called ocean colour which is affected by the presence of phytoplankton. By comparing reflectances at different wavelengths and calibrating the result against in-situ measurements, an estimate of in water absorption parameters can be derived. '''DOI (product) :''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00068