A study of propagation of coherent beams through thermally induced turbulence was presented. Systematic experiments were conducted to assess the effect of phase turbulence on the intensity profiles of beams with different degrees of spatial coherence and the effects were compared with the distortion of a spatially coherent beam propagating in the same conditions. It was found that, a partially coherent beam was less affected than a spatially coherent beam, on propagation through thermally induced turbulence
