Remote Sensing of Particulate Organic Carbon and Phytoplankton Carbon in the Northern South China Sea

Authors

• Xiaoju Pan, Hainan Tropical Ocean University
• Tung-Yuan Ho, Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
• George T. F. Wong, Old Dominion UniversityFollow
• Jen-Hua Tai, Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
• Lijuan Nie, Hainan Tropical Ocean University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1038/s41598-026-66988-y

Publication Title

Scientific Reports

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

26 pp.

Abstract

Surface concentrations of particulate organic carbon (POC) and phytoplankton carbon (C_phy) in the northern South China Sea (NSCS) have been assessed successfully by remote sensing with appropriate regional tuning. Match-up comparisons between satellite derivations and field observations showed uncertainties of ± 28.5% for POC and ± 37.0% for C_phy. The satellite-derived climatological distributions are consistent with previous reports. In the open NSCS where phytoplankton growth is controlled primarily by the convective overturn, both POC and C_phy are higher in winter, associating with the effect of stronger northeast monsoons and surface cooling, than in summer, when surface heating and weaker southwest monsoons strengthen vertical stratification. Toward the coasts, because of terrestrial inputs, POC and C_phy increase, varying by one order of magnitude. Particularly, they are prominently enhanced along the Pearl River plume, which may be extensive to the middle shelf in the summer according to high river discharge and northeastward coastal currents. Elevated POC and C_phy are also found in the waters around the Taiwan Bank where upwelling occurs year round. Similar approaches on the remotely sensed POC and C_phy may be applicable to other shelf-seas in order to improve our understanding in ocean carbon cycle.

Rights

© The Authors 2026.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "Data from this research will be available upon request to the authors."

Original Publication Citation

Pan, X., Ho, T.-Y., Wong, G. T. F., Tai, J.-H., & Nie, L. (2026). Remote sensing of particulate organic carbon and phytoplankton carbon in the northern South China Sea. Scientific Reports. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-66988-y

Repository Citation

Pan, Xiaoju; Ho, Tung-Yuan; Wong, George T. F.; Tai, Jen-Hua; and Nie, Lijuan, "Remote Sensing of Particulate Organic Carbon and Phytoplankton Carbon in the Northern South China Sea" (2026). OES Faculty Publications. 588.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/oeas_fac_pubs/588