Aquarius Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) Ancillary Dataset V1.0

The data is available for ascending (northward) and descending (southward) passes of the satellite only and ascending/descending passes combined. The values stored in this product are the percentage of radiometer and scatterometer measurements identified as corrupted by interference by the RFI detection algorithms [1,2] within each data point, averaged over one month.

An additional RFI flag [3] is used to identify locations where the measured brightness temperature over land exceeds the expected limits of surface emissivity. This flag is not used to remove samples from further processing, but, in generating the radiometer RFI data, 100% RFI is assigned to points where this flag is raised. This product can be used to reproduce the RFI maps available on the Aquarius website at University of Maine (aquarius.umaine.edu/cgi/gal_radiometer.htm for the radiometer, and aquarius.umaine.edu/cgi/gal_scatterometer.htm for the scatterometer), by plotting the variables Rad_RFI_percent_AscDes_AllBeams and Scat_RFI_percent_AscDes_AllBeams on the latitude/longitude grid.