Dynamic Mapping of the Movement of Landfalling Atmospheric Rivers Over Southern California With GPS Data

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are long, narrow, and transient corridors of strong horizontal water vapor transport that can result in heavy precipitation. Measuring the movement of these concentrated water vapor bands is important in gaining better insight into AR characteristics and forecasts of AR‐caused precipitation. We describe a method to dynamically map the movement of landfalling ARs. The method utilizes high‐rate GPS observations from a dense network to derive isochrones that represent the AR arrival time over specific locations. The generated isochrones show that the three ARs, during landfall over Southern California in January 2017, moved southeastward and took about 10 hr to pass over the study area. Overlaying the topography with isochrones reveals that the Peninsular Ranges slow the movement of the landfalling ARs. The large spacing between two adjacent isochrones, reflecting fast AR movement, is closely related to the increased hourly rain rate.

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