Monitoring and prediction of hurricane tracks using GPS tropospheric products

Abstract

We have reconstructed integrated water vapor (IWV) using the zenith wet delays to track the properties of hurricanes and explore their spatial and temporal distributions estimated from 922 GPS stations. Our results show that a surge in GPS-derived IWV occurred at least six hours prior to the landfall of two major hurricanes (Harvey and Irma) that struck the Gulf and East Coasts of the USA in 2017. We observed enhanced IWV, in particular, for the two hurricanes landfall locations. The observed variations exhibit a correlation with the precipitation value constructed from GPM/IMERG satellite mission coinciding with hurricane storm front passage. We used GPS-IWV data as inputs for spaghetti line plots for our path predictions, helping us predict the paths of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Hence, a directly estimable zenith wet delay sourced from GPS that has not been previously reported can serve as an additional resource for improving the monitoring of hurricane paths.