Atmospheric turbulence, generated by a differential temperature between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere, causes effects on optical waves that have been of great interest to scientists for many years. Wave front distortions in the optical wave induced by atmospheric turbulence result in a spreading of the beam beyond that due to pure diffraction, random variations of the position of the beam centroid, and a random redistribution of the beam energy within a cross section of the beam leading to irradiance fluctuations. Those effects have far-reaching consequences on astronomical imaging, free space optics (FSO) communications, remote sensing, laser satellite communication, astronomical imaging, adaptive optics, target designation, hyperspectral LiDAR, and other applications that require the transmission of optical waves through the atmosphere. Throughout this thesis, we introduce a globally concept of turbulence, focusing in atmospheric turbulence.Diverse experiments have been carried out, for instance, the propagation of two parallel thin beams under geometrical optics condition for studying the parameters of optical turbulence, and besides, the same optical configuration was used to investigate the best sampling rate for optical turbulence. Furthermore, we have measured evapotranspiration by remote sensing, in which we have heeded the fluctuations of the refractive index through the intensities of the turbulence. Finally, experiments which involve a new beam are also developed, such as phase-flipped Gaussian beam. This beam shows an experimental reduction on its irradiance fluctuations induced by the turbulence, which means that it has a high performance in optical communications. The experimental reduction aforementioned is proved through the comparison with the theory developed.