NOAA-20 VIIRS Satellite Aerosol Optical Thickness Measurements

Satellite-derived measurements of Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) and aerosol properties over land and ocean. The product provides global data every 6 minutes with a nominal 6 km spatial resolution at nadir. The dataset is produced by NASA's LAADS organization using the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite.

Use Cases

• Analyzing global aerosol optical thickness (AOT) patterns over ocean using spectral AOT and size parameter columns.
• Monitoring aerosol transport and concentration over vegetated land surfaces with the land-specific dark target algorithm.
• Comparing aerosol retrieval performance between NOAA-20 VIIRS and legacy MODIS instruments using the same algorithm.
• Studying aerosol spatial variability at a 6 km resolution aggregated from 64 native 750-meter pixels.
• Tracking temporal changes in aerosol properties with 6-minute acquisition intervals across the satellite swath.

Strengths

• Global coverage providing measurements over both land and ocean.
• At-nadir spatial resolution of 6 km x 6 km.
• Data acquisition every 6 minutes for frequent temporal sampling.
• Version 2.1 contains improvements over the previous collection (v2.0).

Limitations

• Spatial resolution progressively increases away from nadir due to sensor geometry.
• Specific column names, row counts, and file formats are not provided.
• The dataset relies on separate algorithms for ocean and land retrievals, which may introduce consistency challenges.

Provenance

Source

NASA LAADS (Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive & Distribution System).

Collection Method

Data gathered by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite using the Dark Target aerosol retrieval algorithm.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global.