Here are a couple of images I prepared to show the developing spring bloom around UK waters. It all happened quite suddenly with the recent spell of warm and sunny weather. Sorry these are a few weeks old now, I’ve been away from the lab too often…
These are both 3-day composites for 11-13 April 2010: upper image: chlorophyll concentration false-coloured blue to red, using turbid water algorithm (with scalebar). The bloom is shown as everything orange-red on the chl-a map. The majority of the UK and Irish coast is affected, particularly Liverpool bay, E England, E Scotland, N Devon and Cornwall.
Lower image: true(ish) colour composite using red, green, blue channels to show the bloom as varying shades of greener water. Dark blue is clear water, and the greener the water, the higher concentration of plankton. The bright areas around the Irish Sea and English Channel show where there is also sediment in the water, e.g. from estuaries.
There is usually a spring bloom of plankton like this around this time, though I believe this year may have been a little more sudden and intense than average, perhaps because March was cooler and cloudier than normal. So there was less plankton growth earlier, and plenty of nutrients waiting for when it did suddenly become sunny and calm.
Aqua-MODIS chl-a composite 11-13 Apr. 2010
Aqua-MODIS 'true' colour composite 11-13 Apr. 2010