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Twenty years of data contribute to global phytoplankton study

25 May 2020

For the first time, research led by PML brings together satellite ocean colour observations from across two decades with high-coverage in situ observations to compute primary production on a global scale.

Image of small floating objects underwater

Marine phytoplankton are a hugely important component of the ocean, particularly so in the vital role they play in transferring carbon from the atmosphere to the sea, as they fix carbon in the process of photosynthesis, producing energy from sunlight, which is passed up food chains as one organism consumes another.

Estimating this crucial energy production (or primary production) is, therefore, necessary in understanding how oceans and climate change are linked.