Impact of Data Selection on the Accuracy of Atmospheric Refractivity Evaporative Duct Inversions Using Genetic Algorithms

One alternate approach to directly measuring or forward modeling atmospheric conditions that lead to anomalous propagation is to use radar measurements to inversely determine the conditions. This preliminary study examines the impact of varying the quantity of propagation loss data as well as 3 different data location groupings on the accuracy of inversion solutions. The fraction of successful trials increases as the amount of data increases up to ~10⁴grid cells with the largest improvement in accuracy for both duct height and the M -profile occurring between 10°and 10¹ grid cells. Non-unique solutions are problematic with one or numerous (≥10⁵) grid cells.