Phytoplankton photosynthesis and organic matter production fuel marine ecosystems and provide the source material for trophic transfer and export to the ocean interior. Methods for directly measuring photosynthetic rates (both Gross and Net Primary Production, GPP and NPP) are limited in extent and not suitable for broad regional or global assessments. Satellite-based models for estimating GPP and NPP offer the most practical means to meet this need. A growing suite of models has proliferated over the last 25 years and helped shape our understanding of biological variability in the ocean, its role in elemental cycling, and feedbacks with the Earth climate system. This review documents efforts to model GPP and NPP from remote sensing measurements throughout the satellite ocean color era and highlights scientific findings from application of these approaches. In addition to discussing past milestones, we synthesize current state-of-the-art approaches and discuss similarities and differences in their global distributions of NPP or GPP. This review also covers published validation efforts to assess ensemble and model-specific accuracy and last, we provide a vision for future efforts that identifies remaining barriers to improving satellite estimates of GPP and NPP.

浮游植物的光合作用和有机物生产为海洋生态系统提供燃料，并为营养转移和向海洋内部输出提供原料。直接测量光合速率（毛初级生产和净初级生产、GPP 和 NPP）的方法范围有限，不适合广泛的区域或全球评估。用于估算 GPP 和 NPP 的基于卫星的模型提供了满足这一需求的最实用的方法。在过去的 25 年里，越来越多的模型激增，并帮助塑造了我们对海洋生物变异性、其在元素循环中的作用以及与地球气候系统的反馈的理解。本综述记录了在整个卫星海洋颜色时代通过遥感测量对 GPP 和 NPP 进行建模的努力，并强调了应用这些方法的科学发现。除了讨论过去的里程碑之外，我们还综合了当前最先进的方法，并讨论了它们在全球 NPP 或 GPP 分布中的异同。这篇评论还涵盖了已发表的验证工作，以评估集合和模型特定的准确性，最后，我们为未来的工作提供了一个愿景，以确定改进 GPP 和 NPP 卫星估计的剩余障碍。