NASA Deployed PACE in February 2024 to Track Ocean Phytoplankton From Orbit

Q: If oceans and forests consume the oxygen they make, what process actually maintains the air we breathe?

What maintains the air we breathe is not the day-to-day oxygen output of forests or plankton alone, but a long-term geological imbalance: photosynthesis produces oxygen, and some of the carbon tied up in that process is buried instead of being respired back. In both forests and oceans, most oxygen made by photosynthesis is later used up by plants, animals, microbes, and decay. That is why mature ecosystems such as the Amazon, or the surface ocean, have little net oxygen gain on short timescales. NOAA and other researchers stress that marine life produces roughly as much oxygen as it also consumes. The reason oxygen remains abundant in the atmosphere is that, over hundreds of millions of years, a small fraction of organic matter escaped decomposition and was buried in sediments. When that carbon is locked away underground or on the seafloor, the oxygen released when it was formed is left behind in the atmosphere. That slow burial process built Earth’s vast oxygen reservoir. This is the same basic mechanism behind the Great Oxidation Event, when oxygen began accumulating in the atmosphere billions of years ago. More recent research also points to deep Earth processes, including subduction and tectonics, as helping regulate oxygen over geological time by affecting how much reduced carbon is removed from the surface system. So the breathable atmosphere is maintained by photosynthesis plus long-term carbon burial, not by a simple daily surplus from today’s forests or oceans.

3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jun 22

PACE, added by NASA in February 2024, uses hyperspectral sensing to distinguish different phytoplankton communities rather than only measuring overall ocean chlorophyll.
That sharper view matters because species shifts change how much carbon the ocean draws down and how marine food webs function as waters warm.
NOAA estimates the ocean produces at least 50% of Earth’s oxygen, but marine life also consumes roughly the same amount, making PACE more important for tracking ecosystem change than for explaining the air humans breathe.
Prochlorococcus alone may generate up to 20% of the biosphere’s oxygen, underscoring how heavily Earth’s climate and food systems depend on microscopic ocean life invisible to the naked eye.

Sources

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LAUNCH AND SONIC BOOM ALERT SpaceX is targeting Thursday February 8 at 1:33 a.m. ET for a Falcon 9 launch of NASA's PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission to a sun-synchronous

How will NASA's new PACE satellite help predict the fate of the ocean's invisible, oxygen-producing forests?

If oceans and forests consume the oxygen they make, what process actually maintains the air we breathe?

Our air is a legacy of ancient carbon burial. Are modern ocean changes threatening this billion-year-old life support system?

PACE’s First Two Years: Unprecedented Insights into Ocean Health, Air Quality, and Climate from NASA’s Advanced Satellite

Overview

Launched in February 2024, NASA’s PACE satellite quickly achieved operational success, delivering groundbreaking measurements that are vital for understanding ocean health, air quality, and climate change. Within its first two years, PACE marked a major leap in Earth observation by providing first-of-their-kind data. After completing initial on-orbit commissioning, NASA released the first science-quality data in April 2024, including Level-1 and derived products. These achievements highlight PACE’s immediate impact and its role in advancing scientific knowledge, setting a strong foundation for future discoveries and practical applications in environmental monitoring.

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