Algorithmic procedure for retrieving calorific contents of marine phytoplankton from space

Microscopic marine phytoplankton are crucial for the survival of marine animals and sustainability of marine food webs. Developing our capability to estimate and monitor the calorific value of marine phytoplankton in the global ocean is, therefore, invaluable. Using satellite remote-sensing, Roy (2018) reported the first global estimates of phytoplankton macromolecular concentrations based on a novel semi-analytical ocean-colour algorithm. The complete retrieval method builds on semi-analytical computational steps that were developed independently and were customised for ad-hoc applications to certain ocean-colour repository. Given the increasing interest in applying this method in local, regional and global scales, the technical details and customizations associated with the method is presented in this paper.•The method is presented with extensive level of technical details with illustrations, so that the users can follow this standalone document and implement the method on a coding platform of their choice.•The method can be implemented on any satellite ocean-colour repository, and at any spatial or temporal resolution.•Given that a wide variety of software packages are used in the field of ocean-colour algorithms and that the users may be constrained with certain coding platforms, no specific software package is made mandatory to implement the method.