| Near-surface atmospheric refraction, often characterized by the quantity refractivity, affects the propagation of the radar beam, yet it is poorly measured due to its complex pattern. The aim of this thesis is to characterize the structure of near-surface refractivity and its errors.;The vertical structure of refractivity is, on the other hand, characterized in order to inform about low-level propagation conditions. The coverage of radar ground echo observed at low elevation angles is affected by the path of the radar beam determined with the vertical gradient of refractivity. Hence, this study simulates the coverage of ground targets with given vertical gradient of refractivity and compares it with the observed one. The best match between the simulation and observation is used to determine the radar estimate of refractivity changes in the vertical. The results are validated with the estimates from several sounding instruments. Although the identification of ground targets is required for better performance, this novel technique shows certain skill in extracting additional low-level atmospheric information out of radar measurements from ground targets.;In both studies, the characterization of ground targets observed by radar plays a critical role: on one hand, it allows us to extract the structure of the nearground refractivity, but on the other hand it limits the quality of the refractivity retrieval and the estimation of the vertical gradient of refractivity.;The refractivity retrieval in the horizontal is obtained from the radar phase measurements that can be affected systematically by the variability of ground target heights over complex terrain coupled with propagation conditions. This study characterizes such factors statistically and reproduces the expected uncertainty (noisiness) by simulating phase for the assessment of the radar refractivity retrieval. However, the noisiness of simulated phase is much smaller compared with that of observations suggesting that such factors are incapable of characterizing moving ground targets and thus insufficient to fully explain the phase noisiness. |
