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 all their Version 5.0 generated ocean colour products on a sinusoidal projection at 4 km spatial resolution and at a number of time resolutions (daily, 5-day, 8-day and monthly composites) covering the period 1997 - 2020.

Data products being produced include: phytoplankton chlorophyll-a concentration; remote-sensing reflectance at six wavelengths; total absorption and backscattering coefficients; phytoplankton absorption coefficient and absorption coefficients for dissolved and detrital material; and the diffuse attenuation coefficient for downwelling irradiance for light of wavelength 490nm. Information on uncertainties is also provided.

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.)