Analysis of Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll-a Concentration Along the Coastline of the Indian Peninsula Using Remote Sensing Data

Coasts have been the centers of many significant human activities for millennia. The rising population and rapid boom in industrialization and other anthropogenic activities have put the bio–geo ecosystems under tremendous stress. The deterioration of coastal waters has become a global occurrence due to pollution and coastal eutrophication, negatively impacting marine biodiversity. This work uses remote sensing datasets to quantitatively demonstrate and monitor water quality parameters such as water surface temperature and chlorophyll-a. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world witnessed a major lockdown. All human activities were brought to a halt in mid-March 2020 in India during the first lockdown. With the time-averaged satellite dataset of MODIS (AQUA and TERRA) available at GIOVANNI, we have studied and demonstrated that there is improvement in water quality in terms of the algal concentration (decreased by an average of 0.04 mg/m3) in comparison to data derived from 2019. The time series analysis of the dataset (January 2014 till April 2020) shows that the month of February (peak month for growth) 2020 recorded the lowest chlorophyll-a concentration compared with the preceding 2 years.