Land Contamination Correction for AMSR2

Microwave radiometers are designed to capture the Earth's electromagnetic radiation in the form of brightness temperatures. At low and medium frequencies, the relatively large footprint of microwave radiometers results in mixing land and water brightness temperatures in coastal areas and lakes. This mixing of signals, also known as land contamination, limits the usability of radiometer measurements and makes them unsuitable for geophysical retrievals up to ~ 100 km away from the coastline. In this paper, we present preliminary results of applying a land contamination correction on AMSR2 measurements to extract coastal information. The correction technique relies on calculating the land fraction within AMSR2 footprints using a high-resolution land mask and a representative antenna pattern.