Summary

Description

MERIS is a programmable, medium-spectral resolution, imaging spectrometer operating in the solar reflective spectral range. Fifteen spectral bands can be selected by ground command. MERIS is designed so that it can acquire data over the Earth whenever illumination conditions are suitable. The instrument's 68.5° field of view around nadir covers a swath width of 1150 km. This wide field of view is shared between five identical optical modules arranged in a fan shape configuration. The instrument is capable of 300m resolution delivered via direct broadcast, but collects a reduced resolution (~1.2km) global coverage data set on-board the spacecraft. This product contains the geophysical data products in sensor coordinates at the reduced resolution. The products included: chlorophyll a, remote sensing reflectance in the visible bands, aerosol optical depth at 86nm, aerosol angstrom parameter, diffuse attenuation at 490nm, particulate inorganic carbon concentration, particulate organic carbon concentration and the Morel CDOM index. These data were processed to Level 2 using NASA's OBPG l2gen software.