Ten years analysis of Tropospheric refractivity variations

Abstract

The refractivity variations of the troposphere are responsible for various effects on radio wave propagation, such as refraction, bending, radio-station interference, etc. In this work, the refractivity variations of the Hellenic troposphere are studied using data from Helliniko airport of Athens/Greece. The data were analyzed using various interpolation procedures, i.e. in a day-by-day manner for temperature and relative humidity, to transform the data according to a reference height common for the whole dataset and finally for the refractivity N with respect to time, using piece-wise hermite interpolation polynomials for the low and medium altitudes and linear interpolation factors for the high altitudes. Since refractivity varies with time and height, two height independent basic parameters were computed and analyzed: the refractivity at station height N0 and scale height Hs. These parameters can be used to calculate the refractivity profile. Using statistical tools as the moving average, the ß0 parameter and the monthly mean values, together with the corresponding standard deviations, useful results were obtained for the variations of the refractivity with respect to observation hour, height, season, month, day and level.