Statistical modelling of atmospheric mean temperature in sub-Sahel West Africa

Abstract Atmospheric mean temperature Tm, is a vital parameter in the evaluation of precipitable water vapor (PWV) through the analysis of GPS signal, it is therefore important to have a good way of evaluating Tm for the eventual accurate evaluation of PWV using GPS. Simple statistical models exist for various regions of the world for the evaluation of Tm, using surface temperature Ts, in the form Tm = aTs + b, where a and b are constants. For West Africa, where atmospheric data is usually very scarce, there is a minimal attempt at finding a statistical model for Tm, as a function of Ts. In this work attempt has been made to find such a model using data from the Climate Monitoring Satellite Facilities (CM-SAF) of the European Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). The model derived was found to compare well with that obtained using radiosonde data with root-mean-square error of 1.189 and mean-biased error of 0.0952 between the two models.