Researchers from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed the world's first global model for predicting and visualizing atmospheric optical turbulence intensity.
The results were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Scintillation, beam wander, and beam jitter are induced by optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. These disturbances greatly affect atmospheric optoelectronic system performance, making ground-based applications difficult. Many methods exist for detecting atmospheric optical turbulence, but global features like intensity, probability distribution, and spatiotemporal fluctuations are difficult to obtain.
In this study, the team developed a global atmospheric optical turbulence prediction model to address the problem. Leveraging historical detection datasets and cutting-edge big data fusion analysis technology, coupled with the European Fifth-Generation Atmospheric Reanalysis dataset, the model overcam the limitations previously encountered in determining wide-area atmospheric optical turbulence characteristics.
The predicted results of the model offered insights into the spatial distribution characteristics of global atmospheric optical turbulence parameters.
"With this model, we found more regions with favorable atmospheric optical turbulence conditions beyond traditional astronomical observatory sites," said QING Chun, first author of the paper.
By integrating with global numerical weather prediction models, this novel model also enabled the prediction of temporal variations in global atmospheric optical turbulence characteristics.
The team believes that it will provide valuable scientific support for the medium- to long-term operation of large-scale ground-based advanced optoelectronic systems.
Global median atmospheric coherence length from the general turbulence model (Image by QING Chun)
Cumulative probability of atmospheric coherence length at astronomical sites (Image by QING Chun)