Abstract
The main goal of our work is the revealing of problematic issues related to estimates of the absorption coefficient of colored organic matter in the northern seas from data of the Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) on the Sentinel-3 satellites. In particular, a comparison of the OLCI standard error estimates ADG443_NN_err., relating to the measurement and retrieval of the geophysical products, with the uncertainties in the real situation of the northern seas, where the natural conditions are extremely unfavorable (first of all, frequent cloudiness, low Sun heights). We conducted a comprehensive multi-sensor study of the uncertainties using various approaches, first at all, directly comparing the data from satellite (OLCI Sentinel-3 and four other ocean color sensors) and field measurements in five sea expeditions 2016-2019, by using the different processing algorithms. Our analysis has shown that the real uncertainties of the final product are significantly higher than the calculated errors of the ADG443_NN_err., which is 100% and ~10%. The main reason for that is the unsatisfactory atmospheric correction. We present the results of the analysis of the different effecting factors (satellite sensors, processing algorithms, use of the other parameters), and formulate the tasks of future work.