Ocean colour and primary production by OCTS, GLI and S-GLI

The National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) launched Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) on 1996. One of the core sensors was Ocean Color and Temperature Scanner (OCTS), which measured sea surface chlorophyll concentration after 10 years of blank from Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) on Nimbus-7. Although ADEOS stopped the operation with only 8 months, OCTS supplied more ocean color data, which covered globally with high resolution, than 8 years of CZCS operation. The mission successfully followed by SeaWiFS with only a two-month gap. NASDA is now planning Global Imager (GLI) on ADEOS-II launched in 2002 and Super-GLI (S-GLI) on GCOM. The time series of those ocean color missions supply the possible global changes of phytoplankton biomass and primary production with global scale. Examples of OCTS and SeaWiFS application, including primary production estimation, will be given as well as GLI and S-GLI plan