The ESA said the color of oceanic seawater depends largely on the number of microscopic phytoplankton that live in the well-lit surface layer. Just as do land-based plants, phytoplankton accumulate carbon dioxide, making them potentially important carbon sinks.

While phytoplankton are individually microscopic, the chlorophyll they contain colors the ocean's waters, providing a means of detecting large groups of the tiny organisms from space with dedicated ocean color sensors, the ESA said.

To support ocean carbon cycle research, the ESA's GlobColour project has merged 55 terabytes of data from three state-of-the-art instruments aboard different satellites to produce a 10-year dataset of global ocean color stretching to 2007.

In addition to aiding carbon cycle research, the ESA said ocean color data can provide oceanographers with the information they need to monitor the state of the oceans for other applications, such as for fisheries and aquaculture industries.

GlobColour is to begin providing near-real time ocean color observations to support a similar type of operational oceanography this year.