Estimation of the Total Atmospheric Water Vapor Content and Land Surface Temperature Based on AATSR Thermal Data

Abstract

The total atmospheric water vapor content (TAWV) and land surfacetemperature (LST) play important roles in meteorology, hydrology, ecology and some otherdisciplines. In this paper, the ENVISAT/AATSR (The Advanced Along-Track ScanningRadiometer) thermal data are used to estimate the TAWV and LST over the Loess Plateauin China by using a practical split window algorithm. The distribution of the TAWV isaccord with that of the MODIS TAWV products, which indicates that the estimation of thetotal atmospheric water vapor content is reliable. Validations of the LST by comparingwith the ground measurements indicate that the maximum absolute derivation, themaximum relative error and the average relative error is 4.0K, 11.8% and 5.0%respectively, which shows that the retrievals are believable; this algorithm can provide anew way to estimate the LST from AATSR data.

Keywords

• Land surface temperature
• Total atmospheric water vapor content
• AATSR
• Retrieval
• MODIS
• the Loess Plateau