Assessing the response of phytoplankton to global warming

Phytoplankton is considered to be responsible for approximately 50% of the planetary primary production and is at the basis of the trophic chain. Large scale factors such as climate, ocean circulation, and mostly anthropogenic activities, affect phytoplankton biomass and distribution. For all of these reasons, in the ocean, phytoplankton is defined as a sort of sentinel of changes in the ecosystem, because they rapidly respond to environment perturbations. PhysioGlob wants to study the inter-annual physiological response of phytoplankton to global warming using long-term satellite observations (i.e. entire ESA OC-CCI time-series) through the Chl:C ratio.