Improved accuracy of the remote sensing of sea surface temperature

A method is described for determining the water vapor content to within + or - 0.4 g/sq cm from remotely sensed radiances in three infrared channels, 11, 13, 18 microns. Using this method, it is possible to significantly improve the accuracy of sea surface temperature (SST) over what is obtainable with the two channel technique. A radiative computational scheme for the radiative transfer equation is used to study the manner in which the equivalent radiative temperature of the atmosphere changes as a function of wave number for different atmospheric conditions. Average climatological conditions are used to simulate the radiative response of the atmosphere. This radiative transfer simulation is used to compute brightness temperatures for radiosonde profiles obtained from oceanographic ships, which temperatures are in turn used to estimate the SST. Nimbus 4 IRIS spectral measurements corresponding to the profiles were used in the same way for purposes of comparison.