By using the vertical profile of atmospheric refraction calculated by GPS sonde data, the error model induced by atmospheric refraction was proposed. Moreover, the effect of atmospheric refraction on lightning location methods(Direction Finder(DF), Time-Of-Arrival(TOA) and Improved Accuracy using Combined Technology(IMPACT)) were also analyzed. Results show that for the location precision, the atmospheric refraction has the greatest impact on the DF method with the maximum error value of 116.52 m and the mean error of 30.18 m;whereas it has the least impact on the TOA method with the maximum error of 44.70 m and the mean error of 12.32 m;the maximum error and the mean error of the IMPACT method are 58.90 m and 16.74 m, respectively. For the IMPACT method, the location error of far station is 1. 6 times of the location error of more nearby station, hence, the nearby station should be chosen to locate the lightning. To ensure the error induced by the atmospheric refraction less than that induced by timing error of GPS, the station distances of the DF, TOA and IMPACT system should be less than 28 km, 60 km and 45 km, respectively.