Abstract: The interference on the atmospheric transmittance of thermal infrared band, generated by atmospheric water vapor content, is one of the main factors for retrieving land surface temperature from remote sensing images. In Guiyang, the climatic characteristics of low temperatures and high water vapor content in the summer half year increases the interference. To retrieve land surface temperature in Guiyang from Landsat satellite data and improve retrieval accuracy, in this paper, we simulated the variation of atmospheric transmittance with atmospheric water vapor content in Landsat ETM+ thermal infrared band at 22℃ on MODTRAN 4, and fitted a set of piecewise equations for calculating atmospheric transmittance in the band from atmospheric water vapor content. After simulation algorithms and applications, the results showed that calculation error of the piecewise equations was about 0.9~1.3℃, which could meet the error requirement of retrieval accuracy in Guiyang. In the practical application of retrieving land surface temperature in Guiyang, there was about 2.7℃ error between retrieval results and temperature calculated on weather station data, we needed to find out other errors and further improve the retrieval accuracy.

Key words: Land surface temperature retrieval, Atmospheric model, Atmospheric water vapor content, Atmospheric transmittance