First 'Deep Blue' Aerosol Products from the S-NPP VIIRS Sensor

The MODIS Deep Blue aerosol product provides more than 18 years of data and has been successfully used to monitor long-term change of the ambient aerosol optical depth. However, with the aging MODIS sensors, continuation of Deep Blue aerosol products is urgently needed for climate studies. Therefore, the Deep Blue algorithm which was developed based upon SeaWiFS and MODIS is ported to S-NPP VIIRS. Although the basic structure of the VIIRS algorithm is similar to that of MODIS, extensive work was performed for several major enhancements in the retrieval schemes compared to the MODIS collection 6 one. For example, new aerosol type product, improved surface reflectance determination, new dust models for the non-spherical dust and a new smoke mask has been implemented to the VIIRS Deep Blue algorithm. To evaluate the Improved performance, validation results of VIIRS and MODIS Deep Blue aerosol products using data from AERONET sunphotometers over land and ocean will be discussed. Also, AOD time series of VIIRS, MODIS Terra and MODIS Aqua were compared to investigate continuity and validity for climate studies.