The VIIRS/SNPP Deep Blue Aerosol L2 6-Min Swath 6 km product from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) determines atmospheric aerosol loading for daytime cloud-free snow-free scenes. This orbit-level product (Short-name: AERDB_L2_VIIRS_SNPP) has an at-nadir resolution of 6 km x 6 km, and progressively increases away from nadir given the sensor’s scanning geometry and Earth’s curvature. Viewed differently, this product’s resolution accommodates 8 x 8 native VIIRS moderate-resolution (M-band) pixels that nominally have ~750 m horizontal pixel size. The L2 Deep Blue AOT data products, at 550 nanometers reference wavelengths, are derived from particular VIIRS bands using two primary AOT retrieval algorithms: Deep Blue algorithm over land, and the Satellite Ocean Aerosol Retrieval (SOAR) algorithm over ocean. Although this product is called Deep Blue based on retrievals for the land algorithm, the data includes over-water retrievals as well.

This L2 description pertains to the VIIRS Deep Blue Aerosol collection version 2.0 (C2) product. Significant changes have been made to the V2.0 Deep Blue/SOAR algorithms to further improve the data quality. For C2.0, the aerosol products are available for NOAA20 VIIRS in addition to SNPP. Some of changes in the retrieval algorithms and data products include, new SDS suite for prognostic uncertainties of 550 nm AOT over both land and ocean is added, surface pressure is better accounted for for both over-land and over-ocean retrievals by adding surface pressure nodes in the aerosol lookup table, and a number of other improvements which can be found from Product page at:
https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/missions-and-measurements/products/AERDB_L2_VIIRS_SNPP

For more information consult Deep Blue aerosol team Page at:
https://deepblue.gsfc.nasa.gov