Universal fluctuations in tropospheric radar measurements

Abstract – Radar data collected at an experimental facility arranged on purpose suggest that the footprint of atmospheric turbulence might be encoded in the radar signal statistics. Radar data probability distributions are calculated and nicely fitted by a one-parameter family of generalized Gumbel (GG) distributions, Ga. A relation between the wind strength and the measured shape parameter a is obtained. Strong wind fluctuations return pronounced asymmetric leptokurtic profiles, while Gaussian profiles are eventually recovered as the wind fluctuations decrease. Besides stressing the crucial impact of air turbulence for radar applications, we also confirm the adequacy of Ga statistics for highly correlated complex systems.