Technical note A method for masking microwave radiometer data polluted by the presence of land and ice

Abstract We describe a method for removing measurements contaminated by the vicinity of land and sea ice from a database. We applied this treatment to Seasat SMMR wind speed data. The sea ice coverage is determined from 6.6 V brightness temperature and the measurements are masked at distances from land which depend on the land size. The result proves to be satisfactory.