The ESA Ocean Colour CCI project has produced global level 3 binned multi-sensor time-series of satellite ocean-colour data with a particular focus for use in climate studies.

This dataset contains the Version 3.1 Kd490 attenuation coefficient (m-1) for downwelling irradiance product on a sinusoidal projection at approximately 4 km spatial resolution and at a number of time resolutions (daily, 5-day, 8-day and monthly composites). It is computed from the Ocean Colour CCI Version 3.1 inherent optical properties dataset at 490 nm and the solar zenith angle. Note, these data are also contained within the 'All Products' dataset.

This data product is on a sinusoidal equal-area grid projection, matching the NASA standard level 3 binned projection. The default number of latitude rows is 4320, which results in a vertical bin cell size of approximately 4 km. The number of longitude columns varies according to the latitude, which permits the equal area property. Unlike the NASA format, where the bin cells that do not contain any data are omitted, the CCI format retains all cells and simply marks empty cells with a NetCDF fill value. (A separate dataset is also available for data on a geographic projection).