Remote sensing of surface ocean PH exploiting sea surface salinity satellite observations

The overall process commonly referred to as Ocean Acidification (OA) is nowadays gathering increasing attention for its profound impact at scientific and socio-economic level. To date, the majority of the scientific studies into the potential impacts of OA have focused on models and in situ datasets. Satellite remote sensing technology have yet to be fully exploited and could play a significant role by providing synoptic and frequent measurements for investigating OA processes on global scales. Within this context, the purpose of the ESA “Pathfinders-OA” project is to quantitatively and routinely estimate surface ocean pH by means of satellite observations in several ocean regions. Satellite Ocean Colour, Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Surface Salinity data (with an emphasis on the latter) will be exploited. A proper merging of these different datasets will allow to compute at least two independent proxies among the seawater carbonate system parameters and therefore obtain the best educated guess of the surface ocean pH. Preliminary results of the anomaly and variability of the ocean pH maps are presented.