A tropical model for analyzing radio refractivity: Selected locations in North Central, Nigeria

The effect of climatic global change has altered the meteorological factor of the ITU model especially in the lower atmosphere. The refractivity results obtained in an active tropical region of West Africa need to be reappraised. A model known as the Tropic model was derived and tested using NOAA data set. The data set were obtained from Meteorological data obtained from NOAA (USAF) Climatology center. Radiosonde data set was at least 39 years between 1973-2012 for six stations within the North-central of Nigeria. It was observed that the Tropic model detected tropospheric perturbations caused by the extensive influence of aerosol influx. This was confirmed by the hourly refractivity obtained from the ITU model. Hence, the ITU model and the Tropic model are complementary to each other for an accurate terrestrial radio links calculations.