244 
A. Valente et al.: A compilation of global bio-optical in situ data 
Earth Syst. Sei. Data, 8, 235-252, 2016 
www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/8/235/2016/ 
Table 2. Continued. 
International Council for 
the Exploration of the Sea 
(ICES) 
Database of several collections of data related to the marine en 
vironment. It has compiled observations of chlorophyll a con 
centration in the northern European seas, between 1997 and 
2012. Data were provided by the ICES database on the marine 
environment (2014, Copenhagen, Denmark). Compiled stan 
dard variables: chla_hplc, chl_fluor. 
Not available 
Hawaii Ocean Time-series 
(HOT) 
Multidisciplinary programme that makes repeated biological, 
chemical and physical oceanographic observations near O’ahu, 
Hawai’i. Measurements of chlorophyll a concentration between 
1997-2012 were extracted from the project website. Compiled 
standard variables: chla_hplc, chl_fluor. 
Bob Bidigare, Matthew Church, Ricardo Letelier, Jasmine 
Nahorniak 
Geochemistry, Phytoplank 
ton, and Color of the Ocean 
(GeP&CO) 
Program of in situ data collection aboard merchant ship from 
France to New Caledonia, between 1999 and 2002. Measure 
ments of chlorophyll a concentration were obtained from the 
project website. Compiled standard variables: chla_hplc. 
Yves Dandonneau 
Figure 1. Relative spectral frequency of remote-sensing reflectance 
in the final table, using 10 nm wide class intervals, defined as the 
ratio of the number of observations at a particular waveband to the 
total number of observations at all wavebands, multiplied by 100 
to report results in percentage. Data at a total of 134 unique wave 
lengths, between 405 and 1022.1 nm, were compiled. 
Temporal distribution of each variable 
123456789 101112 
Month 
Figure 3. Temporal distribution of chlorophyll a concentration 
(chi), remote-sensing reflectance (rrs), algal pigment absorption co 
efficient (aph), detrital plus CDOM absorption coefficient (adg), 
particle backscattering coefficient (bbp) and the diffuse attenua 
tion coefficient for downward irradiance (kd) in the final table. All 
chlorophyll data were considered, but for a given station HPLC data 
were selected if available. Colours indicate the number of stations 
available for each variable, as a function of months and the hemi 
spheres of data acquisition (N - Northern Hemisphere; S - Southern 
Hemisphere). 
(a) 
SeaBASS- ; 
NOMAD ; 
Moby ; 
MERMAID- ; 
BOUSSOLE- ! 
AERONET-OC- 
10' 5 
665 
3323 
4513 
- 875 
■13579 
17405 
10° 
(b) 
SeaBASS 
NOMAD 
MOBY 
MERMAID' 
BOUSSOLE 
AERONET-OC 
- 456 
3195 
4513 
- 822 
-14558 
-17405 
10° 
rrs (55X nm) (m ) 
Figure 2. The distribution of (a) rrs at 44X nm and (b) rrs at 
55X nm. Data were first searched at 445 and 555 nm and then with 
a search window of up to 8 nm to include data at 547 nm. The black 
boxes delimit the percentiles 0.25 and 0.75 of the data and the black 
horizontal lines show the extension of up to the 5th and 95th per 
centiles. The red line represents the median value and the black cir 
cles the values below (and above) the percentile 0.05 (0.95). The 
number of measurements of each dataset is reported on the right 
axis of the graph. 
by HPLC methods (chla_hplc). A comparison of both mea 
surements (Fig. 6), when available at the same station shows 
good agreement (Trees et al., 1985). As stated before, the 
analysis was done on the final merged table; thus, no data 
were filtered and the good relation can in part be explained 
by the quality control implemented by the data providers 
and curators of repositories such as NOMAD and SeaBASS 
(Werdell and Bailey, 2005). The total number of rows with 
concurrent chla_fluor and chla_hplc is 2002, with contri 
butions from NOMAD (32 %), SeaBASS (47%), MER 
MAID (11 %), HOT (7 %), AMT (2 %) and GeP&CO (1 %). 
The chla_fluor observations are available at 27 933 stations 
(rows), with values ranging from 0.0011 to 100 mg m -3 
(Fig. 7). They are from NOMAD (2350), SeaBASS (15 728),