The importance of the coastal zone for economic activities, and the anthropogenic stresses on the ecosystem, have been described and discussed widely throughout the past 20 years.
Responding to this, ESA designed the MERIS instrument specifically to provide measurements most suitable for coastal zone management and research. In space for 8 years, MERIS has delivered a unique global dataset of coastal zones at 300m spatial resolution, which deserves dedicated processing with internationally agreed algorithms, and provision of products targeted to specific user needs, properly documented and easily accessible.
Beyond this immediate goal this dataset will become an important contribution to further understanding of the coastal zone in climate change, its importance in the global carbon cycle, the generation of biogenically-active gases and its sensitivity and response to changes in temperature, sea level and water mass distribution.

CoastColour will work towards these objectives by developing, demonstrating, validating and intercomparing different Case 2 algorithms over a global range of coastal water types, identifying best practices, and promoting discussion of the results in an open, public form.

Main Results

• Internationally discussed protocols for Case2 waters  processing including algorithm performance assessment;
• A global set of MERIS FR data of coastal zones at a regional scale, processed with best possible algorithms for Level 1, with best possible regional algorithms for water leaving reflectances and IOPs, and demonstrating processing of regional higher level specific products; all products including per pixel error/uncertainty estimates;
• An international comparison of Case 2 algorithms, involving all relevant stakeholders and open to the scientific community;
• Actively demonstrating and promoting MERIS capabilities for Case 2 water processing to the international ocean colour radiometry community, and increase of usage of MERIS within and outside Europe;
• Preparation of the future exploitation of MERIS and Sentinel 3 products for operational Case 2 product applications and for climate change studies.