Improving the Algorithm of Extracting Regional Total Precipitable Water Vapor Over Land From MODIS Images

Precise estimation of total precipitable water vapor (TPW) with high temporal and spatial resolutions is of great importance in different disciplines. Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is one of the sensors which have absorption and nonabsorption bands of water vapor. There is a standard algorithm to produce TPW product of MODIS (MOD05/MYD05) which uses the ratios of reflectances in strong, moderate, and weak absorption bands of water vapor to nonabsorption ones (transmission). This paper aims to present a method based on this algorithm to optimize TPW estimation in local scale. To do so, the western part of Iran was chosen as the study region. Terra MODIS images and MOD05 in clear-sky conditions related to the 100 days in four seasons of 2015-2016 were provided as the selected data. To validate and improve the results, TPW measured in six radiosonde stations and interpolated for overpass time of Terra was utilized. Four procedures were performed. In the first procedure, the coefficients of transmissions were extracted using linear least-squares technique, separately. For the second procedure, the coefficients were calculated in terms of the highest atmospheric transmission sensitivity to TPW for each absorption band separately, and in the third procedure, they were calculated simultaneously. In the last procedure, the errors from third one were modeled with a linear relationship between reflectance ratios of absorption bands. Based on the results, in highest accuracy, the coefficient of determination R-2 and Root Mean Square Error was 0.878 and 2.702 mm, respectively, which were acceptable comparing those of other researchers.