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Atlantic Meridional Transect supported by near-real time satellite data from NEODAAS

1 March 2023

The Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) is a research programme that samples the open ocean between the UK and the South Atlantic, and has recently departed for AMT30 after a 3 years interval due to COVID.

The NERC Earth Observation Data Acquisition and Analysis Service (NEODAAS) has been supplying the AMT research mission with satellite data since 1998, which provides scientists on-board with a ‘view from above’ and helps identify areas of interest, such as high productivity.

In return, the measurements collected as part of AMT form a crucial role in validating satellite products offered by NEODAAS and allowing improvements to algorithms.

Here are some of the satellite images sent to the AMT30 team as they began sampling the length of the Atlantic Ocean (red circle: ship location, white patches: cloud cover, black areas: land).

Often data from a single day is too cloudy so NEODAAS combine images from multiple days to produce a more complete picture.

For more images throughout the mission back to the UK, please visit the NEODAAS Twitter feed.