About the Project

Introduction

Background

Aims

Progress Status

Presentations

FAQ

Team

Contact

Progress status

Reporting period: 15 November 2005 - 31 December 2005

The first reporting period of the GlobColour project has been very active.
After a successful K.O. Meeting hold on November 15, 2005, the management plan and the Software development have been distributed. The iterations with the users communities, IOCCG and IOCCP, have been initiated with the delivery of a first draft of the Requirements Baseline.

Several feedbacks have been received including during the Christmas holiday period, thus allowing to get an updated version for discussion at the SRR.
Several coordination meetings have been hold, one in liaison with the Marcoast GMES project, one with Mersea representatives and one with Medspiration project.

Rosa Barciela from the National Centre for Ocean Forecasting (UKMO) has also accepted to act as an operational oceanography user on December 17.

The first User workshop will be held at LOV (Villefranche) in collocation with Medspiration workshop early December 2006.

The System Requirements Review Meeting is planned to be held at UNESCO (Paris) on Jan. 3-4 2006.

The GlobColour web site will be publicly open on January 16, 2006. On December 31, 2005, the team is complete except for one position still open at UoP for a two-year Post-doc.

Reporting period: 1 January 2006 - 31 January 2006

January 2006 has been very active, starting on 3-4 January with the System Requirements Review hosted by IOCCP at UNESCO (Paris).
The iterations with the users communities (IOCCG, IOCCP and Met Office/NCOF) have been further pursued until a finalised version of the Requirements Baseline was reached at the end of January.
The Validation Protocol has been issued and feedback received from both ESA and the user community.

As planned, the GlobColour web site has been publicly open on 16 January 2006.
www.globcolour.info gives also access to MERIS level 3 data; currently at a 9 km resolution and at 4.6 km in the future.
The first version of the Design Justification File has been submitted to ESA, and circulated internally.
A revised version of the DJF, accounting for comments received, is still under preparation at the end of the period. No major issues have been raised so far.

Following contact with IOCCG and potential providers (including a DDS PI), the need to define terms for the usage of the in-situ and EO data has been confirmed.

Further direct discussions occurred between ESA and NASA on this subject and are still on-going at the end of January.
The GlobColour team intends to participate in the NASA Ocean Color Team Meeting.

A complete set of technical inputs has been delivered to the development team together with a draft Technical Specification table of contents on 25 January.
The System Requirements Review Report is planned to be delivered on 15 February.
On 31 January 2005 the team was complete except for one position still open at UoP for a two-year Post-doc; the team is still searching for an appropriately skilled candidate.

Reporting period: 1 February 2006 - 28 February 2006

February 2006 has been focused on the technical specification.
The complete set of documentation (Requirements Baseline, Design Justification File, Validation Protocol) has been revised and re-issued based on the feedback received by the users communities (IOCCG, IOCCP and Met Office/NCOF) and by ESA.
Feedback from several users has been received via the GlobColour web site, open since 16 January 2006, especially regarding access to MERIS level 3 data and workshop attendance.
The revised version of the DJF now includes a section detailing the preliminary design of the processor, which has required several iterations with the development team in charge of the technical specification.
The System Requirements Review Report, meant to fully document the SRR, has been issued, reflecting the status on 28 February.

Although no major issues have been raised so far, the iterations on the requirements have prevented the consortium from issuing version 1 of the Technical Specification and of the Design Definition File in February.
Following contact with IOCCG and potential providers (including a DDS PI), the need to define terms for the usage of the in-situ and EO data has been confirmed.
Further direct discussions occurred between ESA and NASA on this subject and are still on-going at the end of February.

During this period, the team has selected a candidate for the position open at UoP; two-year Post-doc. Lastly, an abstract has been prepared for the NASA Ocean Color Team Meeting.

Reporting period: 1 March 2006 - 31 March 2006

March 2006 has been focused on the technical specification and initial software development and version 1 of the Technical Specification has been delivered. Requirements Baseline and Validation Protocol have been approved early March by ESA. A further revision loop has been performed on the Design Justification File, including dedicated sections addressing a preliminary analysis of the sensor characterisation based on a survey of existing results as well as the up-to-date results from the last MAVT meeting. Although no major issues have been raised so far, the iterations on the Technical Specification - which is the technical reference that is used to build the architectural design of the data processing system - have prevented the consortium from issuing version 1 of the Design Definition File in March.

Several products have been prototyped and preliminary intercomparison of diffuse attenuation coefficient derived from MERIS, MODIS and SeaWiFS has been performed.

Next period will be dedicated to software development and generation of Diagnostic Data Set products according to technical specification. Characterisation campaigns will be launched according to the rules established in the Validation Protocol. Lastly, several team members will participate to the NASA Ocean Color Team Meeting and GlobColour will be presented.

Reporting period: 1 April 2006 - 30 April 2006

The System Requirements Review has been successfully completed in April 2006 with the following set of documents

• Requirements Baseline (RB v1.1),
• Design Justification File (DJF v 1.2),
• Validation Protocol (VP v1.1),
• System Requirements Review Report (SRR v1.1).

The Preliminary Design Review is on going; feedback has been received on version 1 of the Technical Specification (TS) and an updated version has been submitted.

Version 1 of the Design Definition File (DDF) has been submitted.
Several products have been prototyped and preliminary intercomparison of diffuse attenuation coefficient derived from MERIS, MODIS and SeaWiFS has been pursued.

Next period will be dedicated to software development and generation of Diagnostic Data Set products according to technical specification.
Characterisation campaigns will be launched according to the rules established in the Validation Protocol.
Lastly, GlobColour has been presented at the NASA Ocean Color Team Meeting.

Reporting period: 1 May 2006 - 31 May 2006

The full approved System Requirements Review package has been disseminated to the user community on May 3, 2006.
The Preliminary Design Review has been successfully completed in May 2006 with the following set of documents:

• Preliminary Design Report (v1.0),
• Technical Specification (TS, v1.1),
• Design Definition File (DDF, v1.1).

The activity was focused on software development and generation of Diagnostic Data Set (DDS) products according to technical specification.
Following a working meeting held at ACRI, DDS products have been generated and distributed to the validation team in charge of the sensors characterisation.

Reporting period: 1 June 2006 - 30 June 2006

The full June period was dedicated to the preparation of the Critical Design Review, including delivery of

• Version 2 of Design Justification File (DJF, v2.0)
• Version 1 of Acceptance Test Document (ATD, v1.0)
• and Version 2 of Design Definition File (DDF, v2.0)

DJF v2 version includes the full pre-merger sensor characterisation as well as a review of the potential impact on candidate merging algorithms.

Several changes are proposed with respect to version 1, especially regarding the diffuse absorption coefficient at 490 nm where we propose a unified formulation for all sensors.
ATD v1 defines the acceptance tests for the GlobColour software, which consists of the GlobColour processor, the diagnostic data set (DDS) tools, and the GlobColour web services.
DDF v2 includes a first version of the software and of its hardware environment.
The CDR meeting is planned to be held at ESRIN on July 10-11, 2006.

Reporting period: 1 July 2006 - 31 July 2006

The July period was first dedicated to the Critical Design Review Meeting, that was successfully held at ESRIN on July 10-11, 2006. Fruitful discussions occurred during the meeting that helped solving open issues and making further progress until the end of the reporting period.

• Version 1.1 of Acceptance Test Document (ATD, v1.1)
• Version 2 of Design Definition File (DDF, v2.0) have been accepted
• Version 2.1 of Design Justification File (DJF, v2.1) has been delivered accounting for the major comments made at CDR ;

Version of Validation Protocol has also been delivered and feedback received.

The first User workshop has been confirmed to be held in conjunction with Medspiration 4th User Consultation on December 4-6 2006, in Villefranche-sur-mer.

Critical Design Review (CDR) Meeting. ESRIN, 10/11 July 2006

Reporting period: 1 August 2006 - 31 August 2006

The August period was first dedicated to the preparation of the Qualification Review Meeting, planned to be held at ACRI on September 11-12, 2006.
Acceptance tests have been exercised using the pre-release of the GlobColour processor.
The critical Design Review report has been delivered and accepted.

According to the actions taken at the CDR meeting, algorithms have been further refined for several merged products, including

• Chlorophyll a
• Lnw555
• turbidity mask

Contacts have also been established with Robert Frouin (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) who has developed a daily PAR algorithm taking into account cloudiness as inferred from the ocean colour data themselves. He kindly agreed to prepare a version of his code adapted to the MERIS bands.

Invitations have been sent for the first User workshop that will be held in conjunction with Medspiration 4th User Consultation on December 4-6 2006, in Villefranche-sur-mer.

The workshop is advertised on the GlobColour web server.

Reporting period: 1 September 2006 - 30 September 2006

The September period was very active in preparing the delivery of the Preliminary Products Set (PPS).
The Qualification Review meeting was held at ACRI on September 11-12, 2006.

Although most of the acceptance tests were successfully passed, several issues were raised that required further update of the GlobColour processor and tools.
An updated version of the software was delivered and level 3 products were used as an input to the merging.
The full Diagnostic Data Set (DDS) was regenerated with the post-QR software.

16 positive answers have been received for the first User workshop that will be held in conjunction with Medspiration 4th User Consultation on December 4-6 2006, in Villefranche-sur-mer.

Reporting period: End of Phase 1 report - 7 December 2006

Phase 1 of GlobColour has been successfully completed on December 7, 2006.

The complete documentation set was delivered on December 7, including

• Design Definition File (DDF v3.0),
• Design Justification File (DJF v2.2),
• Validation Protocol (VP v2.2),
• Acceptance Tests Document (ATD, v1.2).

The Qualification Review meeting was successfully re-attempted on December 7 at ACRI, with all former issues closed.
The Preliminary Products Set (PPS) covering 4 full months (July 2002; October 2002; January 2003; April 2003) has been generated with three alternative merging methods:

• simple average,
• weighted average,
• Garver, Siegel & Maritorena method, GSM01.

The PPS includes the following products layers at 4.6 km resolution:

• Chlorophyll-a concentration (Chla),
• Diffuse attenuation coefficient (in-water) (Kd),
• Fully normalised water leaving radiances (available bands),
• Coloured dissolved and detrital organic materials (CDM),
• Total suspended matter (TSM) or particulate backscattering coefficient (bbp),
• Aerosol optical thickness (AOT@865nm),
• Cloud fraction (CF),
• Excess of radiance at ~ 555 nm (turbidity index) (EL555),
• Data quality flags.

New potential promising products have also been discussed and illustrated:

• PAR, euphotic layer,
• Secchi disk depth,
• heated layer.

Preliminary validation and assessment has been carried out using the Diagnostic Data Set (DDS).

Very positive user feedback was received from the 56 participants to the first GlobColour User workshop that was held in conjunction with Medspiration 4th User Consultation on December 4-6 2006, in Villefranche-sur-mer.
The final recommendation was to generate the Full Product Set with the GSM01 method for Chla, CDM and bbp and to generate all the other products with weighted average merging method.
All the presentations discussed during the workshop are available at : http://www.globcolour.info/workshops_forum.html.

Reporting period: 1 January - 31 January 2007

Phase 2 of GlobColour has started on December 8, just after the successful completion of Phase 1 with the first GlobColour User workshop that was held in conjunction with Medspiration 4th User Consultation on December 4-6 2006, in Villefranche-sur-mer.

An intensive production activity has been launched with the objective to generate the complete data set in the next coming 6 months. Validation activities are pursued in parallel. The Preliminary Validation Assessment Report (PVAR v1.1) has been distributed to the users.

An important outcome of the GlobColour workshop was the Synergies with Medspiration on DDS, formats and metadata including a requirement to go towards data format CF1.0 compliant (ISO19115). A working meeting was organised on this subject at UoP on January 29, 2007.

Sam Lavender presented GlobColour status at the 12th IOCCG meeting and suggested a working group on user needs to address the current and future requirements of the ocean colour user community; the main items are listed below:

• Need to strengthen/broaden the ocean colour community.
• Need for an ocean colour equivalent of GHRSST?
• New dissemination methods (Google-Earth).
• Rigour, uniformity and honesty in error statistics need to develop an operational & centralised quality control approach?
• Development of multi-disciplinary integrated (SST + OC + ) data sets for model assimilation, seasonal forecasting, etc
• Need to prepare for a probable gap between ENVISAT and Sentinel-3 data supply, and how to manage the impact of this gap on the users.

Reporting period: 1 February 2007 - 28 February 2007

The February period has been dedicated to the production activity and to the preparation of the validation activities.
A validation meeting was organised by NIVA at ACRI with UoP and LOV partners on February 19-20, 2007.

Processing time line is to be optimised with respect to the needs of the validation team and some other service requirements, like DUE Biodiversity which needs 2006 data in May 2007.

The generation of DDS (Diagnostic Data Sets) products has been launched in advance to FPS (Full Products Set) in order to launch rapidly the validation activities.

Version 1.4 of the GlobColour tools which contains the product reader for BEAM and the match-up extraction tool will be soon released. Discussions about data format CF1.0 compliant (ISO19115) have been continued with JPL, NOAA and NOC.

The GlobColour validation approach and preliminary results will be presented at the Marcoast validation workshop on March 15, 2007.

The second GlobColour workshop will be held in conjunction with Medspiration on 20-22 November 2007, in Oslo, at NIVA premises.

Reporting period: 1 March 2007 - 30 April 2007

The March-April period has been dedicated to the production activity and to the continuation of the validation activities.

The generation board which allows to follow the progress of the products generation is available at http://www.enviport.org/boards/board_gc.htm.
This board is updated on a daily basis.

A progress meeting was held on March 20 at UoP followed by a user meeting at UKMO on March 21.

The generation of DDS (Diagnostic Data Sets) products has been launched in advance to FPS (Full Products Set) in order to launch rapidly the validation activities.
Version 1.4 of the GlobCOLOUR tools which contains the product reader for BEAM and the match-up extraction tool has been released.
Following discussions with JPL, NOAA and NOC , GlobColour data format is now CF1.0 compliant (ISO19115).
The GlobColour preliminary products set can be accessed via Google Earth http://www.enviport.org:8080/globcolour_ge/index.htm.
The GlobColour validation approach and preliminary results were presented at the Marcoast validation workshop on March 15, 2007.

In April, GlobColour was presented at NASA Ocean Color Team Meeting, in Seattle and at ENVISAT symposium in Montreux.
In May, the GlobColour team will participate to the GHRSST science meeting.

The paper submitted at the AMS/EUMETSAT conference to be held in September has just been accepted.

Reporting period: 1 May 2007 - 30 June 2007

The May-June period has been dedicated to the production activity and to the continuation of the validation activities.

The DDS (Diagnostic Data Sets) production is completed for all three sensors (MERIS, SeaWiFS and MODIS) and well as the production of the individual sensor daily product.
The DDS products are available at http://www.globcolour.info/data_access_dds_list2.html.

As planned, the Full Product Set (FPS) of GlobColour merged products will be generated by end of July 2007.
It is reminded that the production progress can be directly followed on the GlobColour Web site.

A NRT service has been put in place for the Biodiversity project.
The GlobColour team has participated in the 8th GHRSST-PP Science Team Meeting.

The next Progress Meeting (PM6) is planned on 3rd and 4th July, University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Reporting period: 1 July 2007 - 31 August 2007

Version 1 of the Full Product Set (FPS) of GlobColour merged products has been generated for the period September 1997 �– December 2006 and is now available for validation. Whoever who would like to test it and provide feedback is welcome.
In case of any question, problem, please send a mail to service@globcolour.info.

Version 2 of the FPS including year 2007 and accounting for feedback received will be generated early 2008.

Version 1 of FPS is available via ftp at http://www.globcolour.info/data_access_full_prod_set.html.

Version 1 of the DDS (Diagnostic Data Sets) is also completed and available at http://www.globcolour.info/data_access_dds_list2.html.

The NRT service that has been put in place for the Biodiversity project has been continued during the reporting period.

A paper has been prepared for the ESA bulletin and a scientific paper is under preparation.

A Progress Meeting (PM6) was held on 3rd and 4th July, at University of East Anglia, Norwich. GlobColour has been presented at IGARSS on July 25, 2007.

The next period will focus on the validation activities and the preparation of the workshop.

Reporting period : 1 September 2007 - 30 September 2007

The reporting period has been dedicated to the preparation of the workshop and to the validation activities. The invitation to the workshop has been disseminated to the user community and a detailed agenda has been established.

Several users and validation team requests asking for specific products have been received and processed following the delivery of Version 1 of the Full Product Set (FPS) of GlobColour merged products ( http://www.globcolour.info/data_access_full_prod_set.html).

GlobColour has been presented at AMS/EUMETSAT conference on September 26, 2007.

The next period will continue to focus on the validation activities and on the preparation of the workshop.