\r\rLike plants on land, phytoplankton need sunlight and nutrients to bloom. The main source of ocean nutrients comes from cold, deep ocean water that wells up to the surface, called upwelling. The circulation of the ocean and atmosphere determine where nutrients upwell. Areas of upwelling, and thus phytoplankton productivity, include the subpolar gyres, along the equator, along the west coast of continents, along western boundary currents (e.g., Gulf Stream) and near islands. Other sources of nutrients to the ocean surface include run-off from land and atmospheric deposition of minerals (e.g., desert dust).
\r\rPhytoplankton bloom patterns change with short-term weather systems (e.g., the passage of tropical storms), with the seasons, and with longer-term climate patterns such as El Niño. Ocean color satellite data such as these allow scientists to study global phytoplankton distribution, crucial for understanding the differences between long-term trends caused by natural oscillations and anthropogenic climate changes (i.e., ocean warming, stratification, acidification).
\r\rThe Ocean Biology Processing Group at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center processed the data and the Environmental Visualization Lab at NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) produced the monthly maps.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 334577, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30754/#media_group_334577", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "Ocean Color, July 2002 - December 2015
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Ocean color maps, based on a month’s worth of satellite data, show El Niño’s impact on phytoplankton. In El Niño years, huge masses of warm water – equivalent to about half of the volume of the Mediterranean Sea – slosh east across the Pacific Ocean towards South America. That mass of warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep water that typically rise to the surface along the equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru.\"An El Niño basically stops the normal upwelling,\" Uz said. \"There’s a lot of starvation that happens to the marine food web.\" These small plants, called phytoplankton, are fish food – without them, fish populations drop, and the fishing industries that many coastal regions depend on can collapse. || ", "release_date": "2016-04-04T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:48:45.268295-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 425427, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a012100/a012176/YOUTUBE_HQ_How_El_Nino_Impacts_Marine_Plant_Life_youtube_hq.00197_searchweb.png", "filename": "YOUTUBE_HQ_How_El_Nino_Impacts_Marine_Plant_Life_youtube_hq.00197_searchweb.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "In this video, NASA oceanographer Stephanie Uz talks about the impact of El Niño’s warm waters on tiny marine plants called phytoplankton.", "width": 320, "height": 180, "pixels": 57600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }