A Topological Hierarchical Clustering: Application to Ocean Color Classification

We propose a new criteria to cluster the referent vectors of the self-organizing map. This criteria contains two terms which take into account two different errors simultaneously: the square error of the entire clustering and the topological structure given by the Self Organizing Map. A parameter T allows to control the corresponding influence of these two terms. The efficiency of this criteria is illustrated on the problem of top of the atmosphere spectra of satellite ocean color measurements.