Global evaluation of NOAA-20 VIIRS dark target aerosol products over land and ocean

The Dark Target (DT) algorithm has been applied to the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the Suomi-NPP (SNPP) and NOAA-20 satellites to extend the aerosol data record from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS). The newly released VIIRS DT Version 2.0 (V2.0) dataset includes NOAA-20 aerosol products for the first time. This study provides the first evaluation of NOAA-20 VIIRS DT aerosol products, including aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Ångstrom exponent (AE), for the period 2018–2022 using Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN) measurements. In addition, the operational DT aerosol products from SNPP VIIRS (V2.0) and MODIS (Collection 6.1) are also used for comparison purposes. Overall, NOAA-20 AODs over land and ocean exhibit good validation metrics globally, showing comparability to MODIS products and superiority over overestimated SNPP products. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in South Africa specifically, NOAA-20 land AODs tends to display more pronounced negative biases, despite all products being underestimated. Furthermore, all ocean AE products demonstrate high correlation coefficients (>0.83) with the ground-based data, meeting the fraction of expected accuracy (>80%). Encouragingly, NOAA-20 AE product has significantly improved the persistent issue of overestimation at low-value in MODIS product, making it a more preferable choice for usage. Error analysis reveals that the performance of all three land products decreases in sparsely vegetated areas and when the solar zenith angle is small. However, NOAA-20 AOD exhibits relatively stable performance and is less affected by variations in aerosol loading, observation geometry, and surface vegetation cover. In addition, the performance of AOD and AE over ocean is significantly influenced by scattering angle and wind speed. This research is anticipated to serve as a reference for the utilization of operational VIIRS DT aerosol products and possible algorithm optimization. •NOAA-20 AODs over land and ocean are comparable to MODIS C6.1 products and superior to SNPP V2.0 products.•All land AODs are underestimated in South Africa, especially NOAA-20.•An obvious improvement is observed in low values of NOAA-20 ocean AE.•Retrieval uncertainties on different main factors are analyzed.