The characteristics of particulate absorption, scattering and attenuation coefficients in the surface ocean; Contribution of the Tara Oceans expedition

Abstract A dataset consisting of AC-S measurements of (hyper-) spectral particulate absorption, scattering and attenuation coefficients were obtained from measurements performed on the flow-through system of the R/V Tara during its 2.5-year long expedition. The AC-S instruments were robust, working continuously with weekly maintenance for about 3 months at a time, and provided absorption (attenuation) data for 454 (375) days, or 90% (75%) of total possible days during the expedition. This dataset has been mapped to 1 km×1 km bins to avoid over emphasizing redundant data, and to match the spatial scale of typical ocean color satellite sensors. It consists of nearly 70,000 particulate absorption spectra and about 60,000 particulate scattering and attenuation spectra. These data are found to be consistent with chlorophyll extraction and with the published average shapes of particulate absorption and scattering spectra and bio-optical relationships. This dataset is richer than previous ones in the data from open-ocean (oligotrophic) environments making it more representative of global distributions and of utility for global algorithm development.