We present measurements of the temperature-dependent frequency shift of five niobium superconducting coplanar waveguide microresonators with center strip widths ranging from 3 to 50 m, taken at temperatures in the range of 100-800 mK, far below the 9.2 K transition temperature of niobium. These data agree well with the two-level system ͑TLS͒ theory. Fits to this theory provide information on the number of TLSs that interact with each resonator geometry. The geometrical scaling indicates a surface distribution of TLSs and the data are consistent with a TLS surface layer thickness of the order of a few nanometers, as might be expected for a native oxide layer. © 2008 American Institute of Physics. ͓DOI: 10.1063/1.2906373͔Superconducting microresonators have attracted substantial interest for low temperature detector applications due to the possibility of large-scale microwave frequency multiplexing.1-7 Such resonators are also being used in quantum computing experiments [8][9][10] and for sensing nanomechanical motion. 11 We previously reported that excess frequency noise is universally observed in these resonators and suggested that two-level systems ͑TLSs͒ in dielectric materials 14,15 may be responsible for this noise.12 TLS effects are also observed in superconducting qubits.9 The TLS hypothesis is strongly supported by the observed temperature dependence of the noise and also by the observation of temperature-dependent resonance frequency shifts that closely agree with the TLS theory. 13 To make further progress, it is essential to constrain the location of the TLSs, to determine whether they exist in the bulk substrate or in surface layers, perhaps oxides on the exposed metal or substrate surfaces, or in the interface layers between the metal films and the substrate. In this paper, we provide direct experimental evidence for a surface distribution of TLSs.TLSs are abundant in amorphous materials 14,15 and have electric dipole moments that couple to the electric field E ជ of our resonators. For microwave frequencies and at temperatures T between 100 mK and 1 K, the resonant interaction dominates over relaxation, which leads to a temperaturedependent variation of the dielectric constant given bywhere is the frequency, ⌿ is the complex digamma function, and ␦ = Pd 2 / 3⑀ represents the TLS-induced dielectric loss tangent at T = 0 for weak nonsaturating fields. Here, P and d are the two-level density of states and dipole moment, as introduced by Phillips. 16 Equation ͑1͒ has been extensively used to derive values of Pd 2 in amorphous materials. If TLSs are present in superconducting microresonators, their contribution to the dielectric constant described by Eq. ͑1͒ could be observable as a temperature-dependent shift in the resonance frequency. Indeed, it has recently been suggested that the small anomalous low-temperature frequency shifts often observed in superconducting microresonators may be due to TLS effects, 17,18 and, in fact, excellent fits to the TLS theory can be obtained. 13 Assuming that the TLSs ar...