An analytical Case 2 water algorithm for the North Sea

An advanced inverse Case 2 water algorithm for the retrieval of concentrations of colour producing agents (CPAs) from satellite ocean colour data is applied to the Skagerrak region in the North-eastern part of the North Sea. A set of the CPAs’ specific inherent optical properties (SIOPs) was developed for this area. Sensitivity tests show that the algorithm’s retrieval accuracy of the chlorophyll concentration (Chl) is highly sensitive to the absorption and backscattering properties of total suspended matter (TSM). Nevertheless, given the presented SIOP set, the algorithm is capable of accurately retrieving CPA concentrations and performs better than standard MERIS algorithms.