Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) Maximum Monthly Climatological Mean, 2003-2018 - American Samoa

Solar irradiance is one of the most important factors influencing coral reefs. As a majority of their nutrients are obtained from symbiotic photosynthesizing organisms, reef-building corals need sunlight as a fundamental source of energy. Seasonally low irradiance at high latitudes may be linked to reduced growth rates in corals and may limit reef calcification to shallower depths than that observed at lower latitudes. However, high levels of irradiance can lead to light-induced damage, production of free radicals, and in combination with increased temperatures, can exacerbate coral bleaching. Irradiance is here represented by PAR (photosynthetically active radiation), which is the spectrum of light that is important for photosynthesis. This layer represents the maximum monthly climatological mean of PAR (mol/m2/day) from 2003-2018.

Data for PAR for the time period 2003-2018 were obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aqua satellite instrument from the NASA OceanColor website as 8-day 4-km composites.

A quality control mask was applied to remove spurious data associated with shallow water, following Gove et al., 2013. Monthly climatologies were calculated from monthly time series averaging for all same-months (e.g., January). Nearshore map pixels with no data were filled with values from the nearest neighboring valid offshore pixel by using a grid of points and the Near Analysis tool in ArcGIS then converting points to raster.

Data source: https://oceanwatch.pifsc.noaa.gov/erddap/griddap/aqua_par_8d_2018_0.graph

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Additional information

Date (creation)	2021-09-07
Date (issued)	2021-09-07
Date (revision)	2021-09-07
Status	onGoing
Update frequency	asNeeded
Metadata language	en
License	The data may be used and redistributed for free but is not intended for legal use, since it may contain inaccuracies. Neither the data Contributor, University of Hawaii, PacIOOS, NOAA, State of Hawaii nor the United States Government, nor any of their employees or contractors, makes any warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness, of this information.
Source metadata	ISO 19115 XML
Last updated	2026-11-04
Created	2026-11-04
API	package_show