Ocean color remote sensing significantly contributes to our understanding of phytoplankton distribution and abundance and primary productivity in the Southern Ocean (SO). However, the current SO in situ optical database is still insufficient and unevenly distributed. This limits the ability to produce robust and accurate measurements of satellite-based chlorophyll. Based on data collected on cruises around the Antarctica Peninsula (AP) on January 2014 and 2016, this research intends to enhance our knowledge of SO water and atmospheric optical characteristics and address satellite algorithm deficiency of ocean color products. We collected high resolution in situ water leaving reflectance (±1 nm band resolution), simultaneous in situ chlorophyll-a concentrations and satellite (MODIS and VIIRS) water leaving reflectance. Field samples show that clouds have a great impact on the visible green bands and are difficult to detect because NASA protocols apply the NIR band as a cloud contamination threshold. When compared to global case I water, water around the AP has lower water leaving reflectance and a narrower blue-green band ratio, which explains chlorophyll-a underestimation in high chlorophyll-a regions and overestimation in low chlorophyll-a regions. VIIRS shows higher spatial coverage and detection accuracy than MODIS. After coefficient improvement, VIIRS is able to predict chlorophyll a with 53% accuracy.

A phytoplankton bloom occurred in Ardley Cove, King George Island in January 2016, during which maximum chlorophyll-a reached 9.87 mg/m³. Records show that blooms have previously not occurred in this area prior to 2010 and the average chlorophyll-a concentration between 1991 and 2009 was less than 2 mg/m³. Given the lack of in situ measurements and the poor performance of satellite algorithms in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic waters, we validate and assess several chlorophyll-a algorithms and apply an improved baseline fluorescence approach to examine this bloom event. In situ water properties including in vivo fluorescence, water leaving radiance, and solar irradiance were collected to evaluate satellite algorithms and characterize chlorophyll-a concentration, as well as dominant phytoplankton groups. The results validated the nFLH fluorescence baseline approach, resulting in a good agreement at this high latitude, high chlorophyll-a region with correlation at 59.46%. The dominant phytoplankton group within the bloom was micro-phytoplankton, occupying 79.58% of the total phytoplankton community. Increasing sea ice coverage and sea ice concentration are likely responsible for increasing phytoplankton blooms in the recent decade. Given the profound influence of climate change on sea-ice and phytoplankton dynamics in the region, it is imperative to develop accurate methods of estimating the spatial distribution and concentrations of the increasing occurrence of bloom events.

Chlorophyll-a concentration is an important parameter of the Southern Ocean water environment, and is influenced by factors such as melting sea-ice and so on. This paper validated and justified the applicability of chlorophyll-a and sea-ice extent derived from MODIS data in understanding the spatial-temporal chlorophyll-a distribution in the Southern Ocean. The sea-ice cover reduced evenly between October and January, and the distribution of Chlorophyll-a varies with latitude and the distribution of melting sea-ice.