Kriging Interpolation for Constructing Database of the Atmospheric Refractivity in Korea

Abstract

This paper presents a Kriging interpolation method for constructing a database of atmospheric refractivity in Korea. To collect as much data as possible for the interpolation, meteorological data from 120 regions of Korea, including both land and sea areas, are examined. Then, the normalized atmospheric refractivity Nn is calculated for an altitude of 0 m, because the refractivity tends to vary depending on the altitude of the observation site. In addition, the optimal variogram model to obtain the spatial correlation required for the Kriging method is investigated. The estimation accuracy of the Kriging interpolation is compared with that of the inverse distance weighting (IDW) and the bi-linear methods. The average and maximum estimation errors when using the Kriging method are 0.24 and 1.32, respectively. The result demonstrates that the Kriging method is more suitable for the interpolation of atmospheric refractivity in Korea than the conventional methods.

Keywords

• Kriging interpolation
• atmospheric refractivity
• wave propagation
• radar corrections