1 Comparing different profiles to 1 characterize the atmosphere for three 2 MODIS TIR bands 3 Lluís Pérez-Planells, Vicente García-Santos and Vicente Caselles 4 Department of Earth Physics and Thermodynamics, Faculty of Physics, University of 5 Valencia, 46100 Valencia, Spain. 6 Corresponding author e-mail: Vicente.Caselles@uv.es 7 ABSTRACT 8 Accurate Land surface temperature (LST) retrievals from sensors aboard orbiting 9 satellites are dependent on the corresponding atmospheric correction, especially in the 10 Thermal InfraRed (TIR) spectral domain (8-14 µm). To remove the atmospheric effects from at- 11 sensor measured radiance in the TIR range it is needed to characterize the atmosphere by 12 means of three specific variables; the upwelling path and the hemispherical downwelling 13 radiances plus the atmospheric transmissivity. Those variables can be derived from the 14 previous knowledge of vertical atmospheric profiles of air temperature and relative humidity 15 at different geo-potential heights and pressures. 16 In this work, the above mentioned atmospheric variables were analyzed for three 17 specific weather station site located in Spain, at three different altitudes. These variables were 18 calculated with atmospheric profiles retrieved from three different sources; The National 19 Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) web-tool atmospheric profiles calculator, the 20 MODIS (MOD07) product and the radiosoundings available on the web of the University of 21 Wyoming (WYO), which are launched by the Agencia Estatal de Meteorologia (AEMET), in the 22 particular case of Spain. Atmospheric profiles from 2010 to 2013 were obtained to carry out 23 the present study. 24