image: Changes of observed GPS vertical position and water storage with time. Top left, GPS measures up to ~20 mm of subsidence around Houston area with arrival of Harvey (red dot and line). The pattern of subsidence also migrates across the gulf coast towards west Louisiana over a 7 day period towards coincident with the position of Harvey. Top right, Daily water storage (plotted as thickness of water disk at each grid node) inverted from the GPS data. The inversion results indicates a third of Harvey's total stormwater was captured and stored on land, most of which ~22 km3 accumulated in the Houston area peaking on September 1st . Stormwater across the Gulf coast took between 2-5 weeks to dissipate, with water. Bottom, timeseries of a single GPS station in Houston, showing change of position with landfall of Harvey dashed vertical green line. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Sep. 19, 2018, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by C. Milliner at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, and colleagues was titled, "Tracking the weight of Hurricane Harvey's stormwater using GPS data." view more
Credit: [Credit: Chris Milliner, JPL, Caltech]