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Full catalog/HAWKEYE_L2_OC
HAWKEYE_L2_OC·v2022.0·dataset

Ocean color and tiny plant life (SeaHawk-1)

SeaHawk-1 HawkEye Level-2 Regional Ocean Color (OC) Data, version 2022.0
ocean NASA OB_CLOUD Level 2 netCDF
In plain English

What it measures. Ocean color readings near the coast, including the amount of chlorophyll (a stand-in for tiny floating plants), how clear the water is, and the color of light reflecting back from the sea.

How it's made. Captured by the HawkEye instrument on the small SeaHawk-1 satellite, then cleaned up to remove the atmosphere's effect and turned into water-quality measurements.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying how much light gets into the water, how productive the ocean is, and how nutrients and carbon cycle through coastal seas.

What's measured

Oceans › Ocean Optics › Ocean ColorOceans › Ocean Optics › ReflectanceAtmosphere › Aerosols › Aerosol Optical Depth/ThicknessAtmosphere › Aerosols › Aerosol Optical Depth/Thickness › Angstrom ExponentOceans › Ocean Optics › Chlorophyll › Chlorophyll ConcentrationOceans › Ocean Optics › Attenuation/TransmissionOceans › Ocean Chemistry › Organic CarbonOceans › Ocean Chemistry › Inorganic CarbonOceans › Ocean Optics › FluorescenceOceans › Ocean Optics › Photosynthetically Active Radiation

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-03-21 → 2023-10-27
  • Measured bySeaHawk-1 (HawkEye)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

The Ocean Color (OC) data suite provides calibrated, atmospherically corrected ocean-optics measurements and derived biogeophysical products. This data suite includes the Apparent Optical Properties (AOP) and provides satellite-derived measures of the interaction between solar radiation and the upper ocean. AOPs are “apparent” because they depend not only on the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of seawater and its constituents but also on the ambient light field. These variables are critical for studying light penetration, primary productivity, and biogeochemical cycling. Geophysical variables in this suite include: • Kd_490 - Diffuse attenuation coefficient at 490 nm, KD2 algorithm (m⁻¹) • Rrs - Remote sensing reflectance (sr⁻¹) • angstrom - Aerosol Angstrom exponent, 443 to 865 nm • chlor_a - Chlorophyll Concentration, OCI Algorithm (mg m⁻³) • l2_flags - Level-2 Processing Flags

Get the data

hawkeye_l2_oc_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="HAWKEYE_L2_OC",
    version="2022.0",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from OB_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.