Spatial Aspects of Sea and Land Clutter from S, C, and X Band Radar Due to Non- Standard Radio Frequency Propagation During a Coastal Sea Breeze

Sea breeze circulations create a spatio-temporally heterogeneous radio frequency (RF) propagation environment that enhances land and sea clutter returns for ship borne radar. Clutter, so influenced by a heterogeneous refractivity field is difficult to model by a single refractivity profile. Mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) is an improving technology that resolves sea breeze circulations with vertical profiles of refractivity every 3km in the area of illumination. This paper will describe the clutter to noise ratio maps at three wavelengths produced by driving a littoral clutter model (LCM) with three dimensional refractivity profiles provided by a mesoscale NWP model