A statistical method to sense sea surface temperature from the Nimbus-7 scanning multichannel microwave radiometer

Among the five channels in the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), the brightness temperature measured at 6.6 GHz vertical polarization is least affected by the atmospheric water vapor and liquid water in clouds or rain. Furthermore, as the undisturbed sea surface emissivity at 6.6 GHz is nearly constant over the temperature range 275 to 300 K, this channel has the best sensitivity to sea surface temperature (SST). The 6.6 GHz channel on SMMR is specifically chosen for these reasons to measure SST.