National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The MERRA-NOBM biogeochemical reanalysis used the NASA Ocean Biogeochemical Model (NOBM) coupled with the Poseidon ocean general circulation model to produce distributions of phytoplankton and ocean carbon. The reanalysis used external forcing fields from the MERRA reanalysis.

Total chlorophyll (ocean-color) data derived from NASA's SeaWiFS, MODIS and NPP-VIIRS observations were assimilated to constrain the phytoplankton distributions. The model contains four explicit phytoplankton taxonomic groups: diatoms, cyanobacteria, chlorophytes, and coccolithophores, to represent the large scale biodiversity of the global oceans. Carbon and nutrient distributions, as well as fluxes of carbon between atmosphere and oceans, are included in this product.

See Model Description for more details.