assessment of long-term consistency of ocean-color satellite-derived chlorophyll-a products in the persian gulf

Over the past two decades, several ocean color satellites have operated in parallel. the combination of different ocean color satellite sensor products is a vital task for studying the biogeochemistry of seas. in this study, we evaluated the temporal consistency of the monthly time-series and monthly interannual variations of satellite-derived chlorophyll-a concentrations (chl-a) from four satellite sensors during 2002-2020 period over the persian gulf. statistical correlation between chl-a time series and anomalies from selected satellite sensors were significantly correlated for 84% area of the persian gulf. correlations were reasonably sensitive to the choice of chl-a retrieval and atmospheric correction algorithms. the standard algorithms for chl-a retrieval showed the lowest value of correlations, and it was indicated that these algorithms were not suitable for chl-a estimations from satellite sensors over the persian gulf. the oci algorithm for chl-a retrieval showed more consistency among different satellite sensors and it was shown that it is more suitable than previous ones for estimation of chl-a from selected satellite sensors. also, it was shown that the seadas and polymer atmospheric correction algorithms have a great influence on the chl-a estimations from selected satellite sensors. it was shown that more than 70% of the study area indicated imperfect consistency between selected atmospheric correction algorithms applied on different satellite sensors. choosing the best atmospheric correction and chl-a retrieval algorithms is the most important task in the estimation and utilization of chl-a in the persian gulf.