Many studies were dedicated to the analysis of the propagation of High
Energy Laser beams in free space. Laser beams propagation performance in
the presence of atmospheric constituents may degrade by some
interrelated linear and nonlinear phenomena. In this study, it is
proposed a self-contained model including non-linear air temperature
effect producing thermal distortion in laser propagation. In order to
better understand the underlying phenomena, a set of quantifiers are
described leading to the characterization of the laser thermal
distortion. A parametric study is finally proposed in order to highlight
the influence of the different parameters of the simulations.