SeaWiFS The Meaning of Ocean Color The Role of Phytoplankton The Carbon Absorbing Oceans

What is ocean color? Why is ocean color important? How is ocean color measured? False color image representing ocean color. What is " false color " ? Photograph taken by astronauts that shows how plankton blooms change the color of the ocean as viewed from space. What are false color images? Experiments or measurements often generate large sets of numbers on a grid. Tables of numbers are difficult to interpret, so we turn them into visual images in an attempt to make some sense of the data. At the simplest level a digital image is just an list of data arranged in a table. Each point in an image, called a pixel, represents a color. How do we assign colors to the points? For temperature it might seem logical to let blue represent cold, green intermediate, and red hot, but any scheme could be used. Usually color is chosen to make the image easy to interpret. A scale or legend by the figure defines the meaning of the colors. Depending on the circumstances, the colors may look real; that is, they may look like we imagine the scene appears to the eye. False color results when some method other than natural color is used for displaying images. The term "false color" does not mean that the information is wrong or that the picture is deceiving you. It only serves to point out that this figure is not a color photograph. You should look at the scale or legend to interpret it.

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