ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Informatics and Remote Sensing
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1602145
This article is part of the Research Topic50 Years of Aerosol Optical Depth Observation from SpaceView all articles
An updated VIIRS Dark Target aerosol product and continuity with MODIS for assessing regional aerosol trends
Provisionally accepted
Virginia Sawyer1,2*
Robert Levy1
Shana Mattoo1,2
Yingxi Shi1,3
Mijin Kim1,4
Lorraine Ann Remer3
Geoffrey Patrick Cureton5- 1Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, Maryland, United States
- 2Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Lanham, Maryland, United States
- 3Goddard Earth Science Technology and Research (GESTAR) II, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, United States
- 4Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research (GESTAR) II, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, United States
- 5CIMSS/SSEC, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States
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The Dark Target aerosol retrieval product includes aerosol optical depths (AOD) and other properties derived from multispectral satellite imagers. Products are available for MODIS on Terra (from 2000), for MODIS on Aqua (from 2002) and VIIRS on Suomi-NPP (from 2012). The recent update to version 2.0 of the VIIRS product also includes NOAA-20 VIIRS (from 2017). As the VIIRS products are intended to continue the MODIS global aerosol time series to meet requirements as a Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) climate data record, the combined dataset is examined for consistency and to ascertain aerosol trends. Overall, the VIIRS products show consistency with the MODIS, and suggest no overall global trend. To assess regional trends, two time intervals are studied: a 22-year record that compares Terra and Aqua, and a more recent 12-year record (the VIIRS-era) that compares three sensors. According to linear regressions of monthly average AOD for each global 1°×1° grid cell, AOD has decreased by between 0.003 and 0.01 per year over parts of China, the United States, Brazil, and much of Europe, while increasing on the same scale over India and parts of Canada, while more modestly but significantly increasing over the southern oceans. For six regions with significant AOD trends, this study examines the seasonal dependence, relationship to aerosol size parameters, and whether the sign or magnitude of these trends have changed. Aerosols are emitted into the atmosphere from a variety of sources, both natural and anthropogenic. Anthropogenic sources such as effluents from burning fossil fuels for industry or transportation and intentional agricultural burning change over time (
Keywords: VIIRS, MODIS, Aerosol Optical Depth, Continuity, Trends
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sawyer, Levy, Mattoo, Shi, Kim, Remer and Cureton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Virginia Sawyer, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, 20771, Maryland, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.