(3) relate chlorophyll, light, and efficiency determinations to global 

 oceanic C0 ? fixation; (4) relate changes in mesoscale or regional biomass 

 to primary production, or changed biomass (this has implications for 

 effects of nutrients and for the settling loss of C0 2 ); (5)include fishery 

 information to get correlations between the extent and timing of phyto- 

 plankton blooms and subsequent effects on larger species. 



II. EXPERIMENTAL REQUIREMENTS 



A set of minimum spacecraft and ground system requirements, necessary to 

 achieve the major scientific opportunities from space-borne ocean color 

 data, were determined. The following requirements, hopefully, allow 

 significant scientific progress in limited well-defined programs, while 

 still offering sufficient flexibility to satisfy a reasonable portion of 

 the needs of other scientific and operational areas. The OCSWG believes 

 these requirements provide the basis both for successfully executing the 

 exciting nearer term shelf carbon /nitrogen flux experiment and for 

 providing a basis for further development in color sensing science in other 

 fields in the future. The minimum requirements for an ocean color system 

 which could receive the support of a significant portion of the oceano- 

 graphic community follows. 



11. 1 SPACECRAFT 



The Tiros/NOAA-I spacecraft was identified as being a suitable vehicle, 

 provided it was flying in a near-noon local orbit (12:30 - 2:00 PM). 



Adding an OC I to the NOAA-I complement of sensors does require some 

 modifications to the baseline CZCS, such as the elimination of the thermal 

 channel and of its cooler. This is an acceptable modification since 

 equivalent thermal information would be available from other NOAA-I 

 sensors. Additionally, the need for a diffuser plate to provide an 

 on-board solar and radiometric calibration is required. 



1 1. 2 MEASUREMENT CHANNELS 



The Nimbus-7 CZCS program demonstrated the feasibility of determining 

 ocean chlorophyll levels (and diffuse attenuation coefficients) from 



xll 1 



