Satellite sea surface temperature (SST) retrieval has been available for nearly three decades. The effects of high aerosol concentrations on SST retrievals are not well characterized and are a significant concern in the Visible/IR Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) retrieval algorithm. VIIRS will fly as a primary sensor on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program. The first opportunity for VIIRS will be as a payload on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), currently scheduled for launch in 2006, which provides a great opportunity to investigate this problem. This study utilizes VIIRS proxy imagery and VIIRS aerosol products to study this source of error. Preliminary results will be presented at the meeting. A comparison between the aerosol-corrected SST’s and non-corrected SST’s indicates that the VIIRS aerosol products are useful for applying aerosol correction in the SST retrieval.