An observed relationship between satellite-estimated transmittance and ground-estimated water vapor : implications for high-temporal-resolution water vapor retrieval from non-geostationary satellite measurements

Abstract

The magnitude of integrated water vapor (IWV) varies considerably in the spatial-temporal domain, which demonstrates the significance of high-spatiotemporal-resolution IWV observations for atmospheric water vapor distribution monitoring, both locally and globally. Unlike previously published algorithms based on data fusion, an empirical retrieval algorithm is for the first time proposed to directly retrieve high-temporal-resolution IWV estimates from near-infrared radiance observations of the non-geostationary Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI). The retrieval algorithm is developed based on an observed regression relationship between satellite-based OLCI-estimated transmittance and ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-estimated IWV in the temporal domain. The results show that all newly retrieved IWV estimates have an overall good consistency with ground-based IWV from additional GNSS-sensed measurements, indicating the feasibility of the retrieval approach. The performance of the retrieval algorithm is acceptable and satisfactory when compared with that of IWV retrievals listed in previous studies.