Atmospheric water vapor content over land surfaces derived from the AVHRR data: application to the Iberian Peninsula

A study has been carried out using simulated NOAA/advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data at 11 and 12 /spl mu/m (with LOWTRAN-7, MODTRAN 2.0, and the TIGR database), AVHRR images of the Iberian Peninsula and the Palma de Mallorca Island, radiosonde observations at seven meteorological stations, and the AVISO database provided by Meteo France to describe, compare, and analyze two different approaches for estimating the total atmospheric water vapor content (W) over land surfaces from AVHRR data. These two techniques are: 1) the split-window covariance-variance ratio (SWCVR), based on a quadratic relationship between W and the ratio of the spatial covariance and variance of bri…