In the paper, we propose a surface wave suppression method in time-frequency domain based on the wavelet transform, considering the characteristic difference of polarization attributes, amplitude energy and apparent velocity between the effective signals and strong surface waves. First, we use the proposed method to obtain time-frequency spectra of seismic signals by using the wavelet transform and calculate the instantaneous polarizability at each point based on instantaneous polarization analysis. Then, we separate the surface wave area from the signal area based on the surface-wave apparent velocity and the average energy of the signal. Finally, we combine the polarizability, energy, and frequency characteristic to identify and suppress the signal noise. Model and field data are used to test the proposed filtering method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]