Remote sensing of vertical phytoplankton pigment distributions in the Baltic: new mathematical expressions. Part 2: Accessory pigment distribution

This is the second in a series of articles, the aim of which is to derive mathematical expressions describing the vertical distributions of the concentrations of different groups of phytoplankton pigments; these expressions are necessary in the algorithms for the remote sensing of the marine ecosystem. It presents formulas for the vertical profiles of the following groups of accessory phytoplankton pigments: chlorophylls b, chlorophylls c, phycobilins, photosynthetic carotenoids and photoprotecting carotenoids, all for the uppermost layer of water in the Baltic Sea with an optical depth of τ ≈ 5. The mathematical expressions for the first four of these five groups of pigments, classified as photosynthetic pigments, enable their concentrations to be estimated at different optical depths in the sea from known surface concentrations of chlorophyll a. The precision of these estimates is characterised by the following relative statistical errors according to logarithmic statistics σ−: approximately 44% for chlorophyll b, approx. 39% for chlorophyll c, approx. 43% for phycobilins and approx. 45% for photosynthetic carotenoids. On the other hand, the mathematical expressions describing the vertical distributions of photoprotecting carotenoid concentrations enable these to be estimated at different depths in the sea also from known surface concentrations of chlorophyll a, but additionally from known values of the irradiance in the PAR spectral range at the sea surface, with a statistical error σ− of approximately 42%