EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/egusphere-2026-3895 Measurement Methods and Applications of Atmospheric Refractivity Based on Raman Lidar Wu Yushang 1 3 Zhao Xiaofeng 1 Zhou Zeming 1 Yang Pinglv https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0065-5264 1 Li Deyang 2 Zhou Menglong 2 Tu Kaijun 3 Wang Bo 3 Qiu Zhijin https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9243-6853 3 College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China Voncher (Luoyang) Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd.,Luoyang 471000, China State Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Institute of Oceanographic Instrumentation, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Qingdao 266000, China 24 08 2026 2026 1 22 Copyright: © 2026 Yushang Wu et al. 2026 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3895/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3895/egusphere-2026-3895.pdf

Atmospheric refractive index stratification significantly affects the propagation of electromagnetic waves. High-vertical-resolution atmospheric refractivity (N) data acquired within the near-surface layer can be used to effectively evaluate the operational effectiveness of electronic equipment. On the basis of the principle of Raman scattering, an N measuring instrument utilizing Raman lidar was designed. It achieves high-vertical-resolution detection of temperature and humidity profiles within the 2.4 to 120 m altitude range and calculates the N on the basis of these data via the hypsometric formula. A field comparison test was conducted in 10 to 26 January 2024 LT using layered observation data from a gradient tower. The overall root mean square error (RMSE) of the Raman lidar for air temperature (AT) and relative humidity (RH) detection were 0.50 °C and 3.11 %, respectively; the overall RMSE for N detection was 2.65 N-units. With respect to the altitude layer, the AT, RH, and N detection mean absolute error (MAE) ranged from 0.34 to 0.54 °C, 1.90 to 3.53 %, and 1.87 to 2.35 N-units, respectively. This research provides an effective method for measuring the N.