Data for "Assessing VIIRS aerosol data assimilation as a MODIS successor in the NASA GEOS system"

This tar file contains the datasets produced for the manuscript "Assessing VIIRS aerosol data assimilation as a MODIS successor in the NASA GEOS system". The contents include both observational data subsets and model output from the data assimilation experiments presented in the paper. Specifically, this dataset evaluates a test experiment assimilating VIIRS Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data from NOAA-20 alongside a baseline control experiment assimilating MODIS Terra and Aqua data. The assimilation simulations were conducted using version 11.6.1 of the GEOS atmospheric model coupled to GOCART-2G (available at https://github.com/GEOS-ESM/GEOSgcm/releases/tag/v11.6.1), spanning the evaluation period of March 2019 through February 2020. To support the figures and analysis in the manuscript, we provide specific subsets of the MODIS and VIIRS Neural Network Retrieval (NNR) AOD at 550 nm datasets. These subsets include the 2019 seasonal mean NNR AOD predictions gridded to a 0.25° by 0.3125° spatial resolution, NNR AOD collocated with AERONET observations spanning 2019 to 2025, and monthly mean NNR AOD aggregated over selected regions from 2019 to 2025. Additionally, the archive contains the GEOS assimilation model output, featuring the simulated continuous seasonal mean AOD at 550 nm for both the MODIS control and VIIRS NOAA-20 experiments. We also include the analyzed model AOD fields that have been spatially and temporally co-located with both ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) stations globally and ship-based Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN) trajectories.