Physics-based simultaneous retrieval of atmospheric temperature-humidity profiles and land surface temperature-emissivity by integrating Terra/Aqua MODIS measurements

Atmospheric temperature-humidity profiles and land or sea surface temperature are coupled actions in the earth system process. Based on the numerical perturbation form of the atmospheric radiative transfer equation, a physics-based algorithm is presented to integrate four pairs of MODIS measurements from the Terra and Aqua satellites to retrieve simultaneously atmospheric temperature-humidity profile, land-surface temperature and emissivity. Three pairs of MODIS data at two field sites in China, Luancheng and Poyang Lake areas, have been chosen to test and validate the model. Two pairs of atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles, land surface temperature (LST), and land surface emissivity (LSE) have been retrieved simultaneously for every pair of MODIS measurements respectively by the proposed physical algorithm for the study area. The synchronous field measurements at two field sites were conducted to validate the retrieval LST, the differences between the retrieved LST and the field measurements are in the range of -0.15 K and 1.11 K. The emissivity errors of MODIS bands 31 and 32, compared with the EOS MODIS LST/LSE data products (MOD11_L2/MYD11_L2 V5) by the physics-based day/night algorithm, are from 0.0018 to 0.44 and from 0.0058 to 1.24, respectively. Meanwhile, the retrieved atmospheric profiles fully agree with the standard atmospheric temperature-water vapor profiles and with the results from single MODIS data onboard Terra or Aqua satellite by the former two-step physical algorithm. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is robust enough to improve the retrieval accuracy of the atmospheric profiles and land surface parameters. And it will have four pairs of the retrieval results for one area each day by integrating these MODIS measurements from Terra and Aqua satellites.