Toward the Version 2.0 of VIIRS Deep Blue Aerosol Products

The VIIRS Deep Blue (DB) aerosol product has successfully released in 2019 to carry on the heritage of 19 years of MODIS DB product. The VIIRS DB algorithm includes several significant updates over that of MODIS, such as the implementation of Satellite Ocean Aerosol Retrieval (SOAR) to extend the data coverage to water surfaces, new aerosol type product, improved surface reflectance determination, new dust optical models to account for nonsphericity of dust particles, and new smoke mask. To further improve the data quality, version 2 DB algorithm is in preparation. The version 2 product improves retrieval of aerosol optical properties over high elevation regions where the version 1 tended to show a negative bias, partly due to rather strong Rayleigh correction. In addition, the data coverage will be extended toward absorbing aerosol events above clouds, which will aid in studies of relevant topics, such as aerosol-cloud interactions, radiative forcing, and bias in cloud optical depth. In this presentation, progress made to VIIRS DB version 2 product will be addressed and a preliminary validation of the improved product against Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) will be discussed.