Application of Synthetic DINCAE–BME Spatiotemporal Interpolation Framework to Reconstruct Chlorophyll–a from Satellite Observations in the Arabian Sea

Abstract

Chlorophyll–a (Chl–a) concentration is an indicator of phytoplankton pigment, which is associated with the health of marine ecosystems. A commonly used method for the determination of Chl–a is satellite remote sensing. However, due to cloud cover, sun glint and other issues, remote sensing data for Chl–a are always missing in large areas. We reconstructed the Chl–a data from MODIS and VIIRS in the Arabian Sea within the geographical range of 12–28° N and 56–76° E from 2020 to 2021 by combining the Data Interpolating Convolutional Auto–Encoder (DINCAE) and the Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) methods, which we named the DINCAE–BME framework. The hold–out validation method was used to assess the DINCAE–BME method’s performance. The root–mean–square–error (RMSE) and the mean–absolute–error (MAE) values for the hold–out cross–validation result obtained by the DINCAE–BME were 1.8824 mg m−3 and 0.4682 mg m−3, respectively; compared with in situ Chl–a data, the RMSE and MAE values for the DINCAE–BME–generated Chl–a product were 0.6196 mg m−3 and 0.3461 mg m−3, respectively. Moreover, DINCAE–BME exhibited better performance than the DINEOF and DINCAE methods. The spatial distribution of the Chl–a product showed that Chl–a values in the coastal region were the highest and the Chl–a values in the deep–sea regions were stable, while the Chl–a values in February and March were higher than in other months. Lastly, this study demonstrated the feasibility of combining the BME method and DINCAE.