In ocean color remote sensing, atmospheric correction is a vital process for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of ocean color products. Furthermore, in recent years, the remote sensing community has intensified its requirements for understanding errors in satellite data. Accordingly, research is currently addressing errors in remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) resulting from inaccuracies in meteorological variables (total ozone, pressure, wind field, and total precipitable water) used as auxiliary data for atmospheric correction. However, there has been no investigation into the error in Rrs caused by the variability of the water vapor profile, despite it being a recognized error source. In this study, we used the Second Simulation of a Satellite Signal Vector version 2.1 simulation to compute errors in water vapor transmittance arising from variations in the water vapor profile within the GOCI-II observation area. Subsequently, we conducted an analysis of the associated errors in ocean color products. The observed water vapor profile not only exhibited a complex shape but also showed significant variations near the surface, leading to differences of up to 0.007 compared to the US standard 62 water vapor profile used in the GOCI-II atmospheric correction. The resulting variation in water vapor transmittance led to a difference in aerosol reflectance estimation, consequently introducing errors in Rrs across all GOCI-II bands. However, the error of Rrs in the 412–555 nm due to the difference in the water vapor profile band was found to be below 2%, which is lower than the required accuracy. Also, similar errors were shown in other ocean color products such as chlorophyll-a concentration, colored dissolved organic matter, and total suspended matter concentration. The results of this study indicate that the variability in water vapor profiles has minimal impact on the accuracy of atmospheric correction and ocean color products. Therefore, improving the accuracy of the input data related to the water vapor column concentration is even more critical for enhancing the accuracy of ocean color products in terms of water vapor absorption correction.

Keywords: Geostationary Ocean Color Imager-II, Ocean color, Water vapor absorption correction, Error analysis, Atmospheric correction