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 their Version 3.1 inherent optical properties (IOP) product (in mg/m3) 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). Note, the IOP data are also included in the 'All Products' dataset.

The inherent optical properties (IOP) dataset consists of the total absorption and particle backscattering coefficients, and, additionally, the fraction of detrital & dissolved organic matter absorption and phytoplankton absorption. The total absorption (units m-1), the total backscattering (m-1), the absorption by detrital and coloured dissolved organic matter, the backscattering by particulate matter, and the absorption by phytoplankton share the same spatial resolution of ~4 km. The values of IOP are reported for the standard SeaWiFS wavelengths (412, 443, 490, 510, 555, 670nm).

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.)