Radar Monitoring of Turbulence at the Tropopause Level

Book excerpt: Turbulence due to vertical wind shear at the tropopause temperature inversion produces small-scale temperature irregularities which cause echoes on sensitive microwave radars and allow monitoring of the tropopause level and study of the progression of dynamic instability and turbulence generation in the clear atmosphere. For tropopause temperatures below about -45 to -50°C, the structure constant C2T, a characteristic measure of temperature variability within the inertial subrange, may be determined from radar reflectivity with an error less than 3 dB by neglecting water vapor contributions to refractive-index variability.