A series of 25 Nimbus 7 coastal zone color scanner images obtained from July 1981 to September 1983 in Portuguese coastal waters was analyzed in order to study the space-time distribution of phytoplankton pigment. In the images from winter and spring, the phytoplankton distributions showed no significant spatial patterns. During the upwelling season, from late June to October, several recurrent patterns were observed. Filaments of high pigment concentration extended zonally 200 km off the west coast of Portugal, north of Lisbon. Pigment-rich plumes were observed south of capes along the west coast, south of Lisbon, and parallel to the south coast of Portugal. The location of the filaments and plumes coincided with topographic features such as submarine ridges. South of Lisbon the location of plumes was also related to coastal morphology. The temporal variability of the pigment patterns was compared with the wind-induced offshore Ekman transport calculated from measurements made at two meteorological stations, located at Lisbon and Faro, on the south coast. A significant relationship was found: well-developed phytoplankton structures were generally related to moderate or intense offshore transport, whereas the absence of plumes corresponded to either weak offshore transport or coastal convergence. For each of the three coastal areas in this study, scatter plots showed linear relationships between digital counts of phytoplankton concentration and sea surface temperature. The spatial variation of the temperature range decreased in time after the onset of an upwelling event. One cause of this variation could be the north-south change in temperature of the upwelled Eastern North Atlantic Central Water along the Portuguese coast. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1992