Atmospheric water vapour derived from MOS-B land imagery

As part of an effort to investigate the use of MOS-B imagery for land applications, atmospheric water vapour was derived from MOS-B imagery. The atmospheric precorrected differential absorption (APDA) algorithm employs narrow spectral bands centered at 870, 940 and 1010nm and a database with radiative transfer calculations. Maps of water vapour column were derived for multitemporal MOS-B scenes acquired in 1996. The comparison with water vapour columns based on local radiosonde soundings agrees within 10-20%. It is concluded that the same technique can successfully be applied to data of future satellite sensors equipped with similar water vapour channels.