Low‐angle radar tracking errors induced by nonstratified atmospheric anomalies

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Anomalous refractive profiles and inversion layer structures at the Western Test Range, Vandenberg, California, were measured using airborne sensors. When the marine inversion layer was traced inland, the refractive gradient was observed to undergo upward warping, waving, dilation, lensing, and splitting. Refraction corrections computed using airborne‐measured, full cross sections along the radar line of sight were at times more than twice as large as those corrections resulting from single‐point radiosonde or aircraft spiral inputs, which must assume a spherically stratified atmosphere. Ray‐tracing techniques could reliably predict the location of actually observed radio holes (areas where radar loss‐of‐lock occurs) only when inputs from full, three‐dimensional, airborne cross sections were used.