NASA PACE Captures Black Sea Turquoise Bloom on June 22
Updated
Updated · Science@NASA · Jun 25
NASA PACE Captures Black Sea Turquoise Bloom on June 22
2 articles · Updated · Science@NASA · Jun 25
Summary
June 22 PACE imagery showed the Black Sea covered in swirling turquoise waters, turning a basin that often looks dark into a broad visible bloom from space.
Coccolithophores likely drove the color shift: the calcium carbonate-coated phytoplankton dominate in late spring and early summer and give surface waters a milky-blue cast.
The Bosphorus also turned turquoise, and an ISS astronaut photographed phytoplankton tracing currents there on May 27, about a month before the PACE image.
Remote sensing helps researchers track bloom dynamics where direct sampling is limited, while the blooms also matter to the carbon cycle because some captured carbon sinks to the seafloor after the organisms die.