Two decades of km-resolution satellite-based measurements of the precipitable water vapor above the Atacama Desert

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution satellite data, calibrated with ground measurements, to map precipitable water vapor in the Atacama Desert over two decades, aiding site selection for astronomical facilities and revealing a moderate increase in water vapor linked to global warming.

Contribution

It introduces a method to calibrate satellite PWV data with ground measurements for regional mapping and demonstrates its application in identifying optimal astronomical sites and analyzing climate trends.

Findings

Identified several promising sites for astronomical facilities.

Revealed a moderate increase in PWV over two decades.

Confirmed climate model predictions of increasing PWV with global temperature.

Abstract

The Atacama Desert has long been established as an excellent site for submillimeter observations. Yet identifying potentially optimal locations for a new facility within this region can require long field campaigns that rely on the construction of weather stations and radiometer facilities to take data over sufficiently long timescales. Meanwhile, high-level remote sensing data products from satellites have generally only been available at >25 km resolution, limiting their utility for astronomical site selection. We aim to improve and expedite the process of site selection through the use of km-resolution satellite data. We analyze the daytime precipitable water vapor (PWV) values inferred using near-IR measurements from the MODIS Aqua and Terra satellites, comparing the level-2 satellite products to those from existing ground-based measurements from the radiometer at the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) site. Since the APEX radiometer data has been extensively tested and compared to atmospheric transmission models, particularly in low-PWV conditions of interest for astronomy, we use these data to provide a re-calibration of the MODIS data for the entire region. After re-calibration, the satellite data allow mapping of the PWV across the region, and we identify several promising sites. We demonstrate a potentially powerful method for siting new facilities such as AtLAST and extensions to global very long baseline interferometry networks like the EHT. Further, our findings identify a trend in both the APEX and MODIS data, and indicate that the PWV has increased moderately over the past two decades. We verify this trend exists in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) climate models, and show that it is worse in the case of greater increase in the average global temperature.