Microwave and Infrared Scattering and Absorption Related to Atmospheric Inhomogeneities

Abstract

To study the scattering of electromagnetic waves by atmospheric turbulence, a combined experiment has been set up in which meteorological measurements of the atmospheric structure and its statistics are taken simultaneously with the radio-wave statistics. A particular 10.4 GHz microwave technique,¹ new to line-of-sight atmospheric measurements,² is being used; it can observe the statistics of the phase quadrature components of the incoherent scattered field directly and it is sensitive to the effects of spherical wavefronts. The measured microwave scattering effects will be compared in several ways with the simultaneously measured turbulence. With the understanding so gained, it is hoped that these special features of this microwave technique can be exploited as a probe to study atmospheric turbulence in other regions of the atmosphere.