Aerosol Correction for NPOESS VIIRS Sea Surface Temperature

Satellite sea surface temperature (SST) retrieval has been available for nearly three decades. The effects of high aerosol concentrations on SST retrievals are not well characterized and are a significant concern in the Visible/IR Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) retrieval algorithm. VIIRS will fly as a primary sensor on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program. The first opportunity for VIIRS will be as a payload on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), currently scheduled for launch in 2006, which provides a great opportunity to investigate this problem. This study utilizes VIIRS proxy imagery and VIIRS aerosol products to study this source of error. Preliminary results will be presented at the meeting. The VIIRS aerosol products are comparable to the MODIS aerosol products, while VIIRS improves the spatial resolution. A comparison between the aerosol-corrected SST's and non-corrected SST's indicates that the VIIRS aerosol products are useful for applying aerosol correction in the SST retrieval.