Evaporation duct refractivity inversion from EM propagation measurements and NAVSLaM predictions

An important application of air-sea interaction research is in characterizing marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) properties, ducting in particular, in order to predict radar and radio communication conditions in the marine environment. This ongoing research project, conducted off the coast of Duck, NC, during October-November of 2015, provided an opportunity to measure EM propagation during the CASPER at-sea experimental campaigns. The measured signal is used to invert for the evaporation duct refractivity profile based on Terrain Parabolic Equation Model (TPEM) and compared to the profile predicted from NAVSLaM using concurrent meteorological and oceanographic measurements as input.