Aqua MODIS Ocean Color Swath during Hurricane Katrina

  • Released Wednesday, April 12, 2006
  • Updated Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 12:15PM
  • ID: 3328
The Aqua satellite orbits the Earth every 99 minutes in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit. The MODIS instrument on Aqua observes reflected light from the Earth in 36 spectral frequencies. These observations can be processed to show many properties of the Earth's surface, from temperature and phytoplankton measurements near the surface of the ocean to fire occurrences and land cover characteristics on the land surface.
This animation shows MODIS ocean color data from about 4 days of individual Aqua orbits. Ocean color is a measurement of the amount of chlorophyll in ocean phytoplankton and is therefore a direct measurement of the amount of life in the ocean. It can only be measured in ocean regions that are free of both clouds and sun glint, the bright band of specular reflection in the center of each granule.

Four days of Aqua MODIS ocean color swaths during the period of Hurricane Katrina, from August 27, 2005 through August 30, 2005.

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The legend for ocean color measurements.

The legend for ocean color measurements.

For More Information

See http://science.hq.nasa.gov/oceans/living/color.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Datasets used in this visualization

Aqua (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
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Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

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