MAIAC Aerosol Algorithm Over Water

Abstract MAIAC VIIRS Collection 2 aerosol product for the first time provides global coverage over land and ocean. This paper gives a first systematic description of MAIAC ocean aerosol algorithm covering cases of open ocean, waters with sediments and brown waters from rivers' discharge. An extensive validation of MAIAC AOD and Ångström Exponent (AE) against AERONET and Maritime Aerosol Network data confirms retrieval accuracy within ±10% for AOD and ±0.4 for AE. A comparison with the Deep Blue (DB) and Dark Target (DT) algorithms shows a generally similar performance with some improvement in the AE accuracy and in cloud detection. A comparison of MAIAC aerosol products derived from VIIRS on SNPP, JPSS1 and JPSS2 satellites indicates minor spectral calibration differences which will be addressed in our ongoing calibration work.