A long-term investigation of AMSR-E Radio Frequency Interference

The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua was able to acquire global data for about nine years, from June 2002 to October 2011. During its operating phase, the main problem concerning AMSR-E data was the Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) which contaminated data acquired at C- and, with less relevance, X-bands. In this work the whole AMSR-E data-set has been analyzed by implementing the Robust Satellite Techniques (RST) approach. Such a multi-temporal technique allows for an automatic identification of areas which were systematically affected by RFI contaminating C- and X-band AMSR-E radiances. In addition, such an analysis gives us the opportunity of a first look for inter-annual RFI variations at a global scale. Preliminary outcomes of such a work are shown in this paper.