Tracking the of Harvey's stormwater using GPS data.

On 26 August 2017, Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast as a category four cyclone depositing ~95 km 3 of water, makingitthewettestcycloneinU.S.history.WaterleftinHarvey ’ swakeshouldcauseelasticloadingandsubsidenceof Earth ’ s crust, anduplift as it drains intotheocean andevaporates. To track dailychanges of transient water storage, we use Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements, finding a clear migration of subsidence (up to 21 mm) and horizontal motion (up to 4 mm) across the Gulf Coast, followed by gradual uplift over a 5-week period. Inversion of these data shows that a third of Harvey ’ s total stormwater was captured on land (25.7 ± 3.0 km 3 ), indicating that the rest drained rapidly into the ocean at a rate of 8.2 km 3 /day, with the remaining stored water gradually lost over the following 5 weeks at ~1 km 3 /day, primarily by evapotranspiration. These results indicate that GPS networks can re-motely track the spatial extent and daily evolution of terrestrial water storage following transient, extreme precipitation events, with implications for improving operational flood forecasts and understanding the response of drainage systems to large influxes of water.

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