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. 2017 Jul 19;7(1):5874.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-06095-1.

Annual variations of monsoon and drought detected by GPS: A case study in Yunnan, China

Weiping Jiang  1 , Peng Yuan  2   3 , Hua Chen  4 , Jianqing Cai  3 , Zhao Li  5 , Nengfang Chao  6 , Nico Sneeuw  3
Affiliations

Annual variations of monsoon and drought detected by GPS: A case study in Yunnan, China

Weiping Jiang et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

The Global Positioning System (GPS) records monsoonal precipitable water vapor (PWV) and vertical crustal displacement (VCD) due to hydrological loading, and can thus be applied jointly to diagnose meteorological and hydrological droughts. We have analyzed the PWV and VCD observations during 2007.0-2015.0 at 26 continuous GPS stations located in Yunnan province, China. We also obtained equivalent water height (EWH) derived from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) and precipitation at these stations with the same period. Then, we quantified the annual variations of PWV, precipitation, EWH and VCD and provided empirical relationships between them. We found that GPS-derived PWV and VCD (positive means downward movement) are in phase with precipitation and GRACE-derived EWH, respectively. The annual signals of VCD and PWV show linearly correlated amplitudes and a two-month phase lag. Furthermore, the results indicate that PWV and VCD anomalies can also be used to explore drought, such as the heavy drought during winter/spring 2010. Our analysis results verify the capability of GPS to monitor monsoon variations and drought in Yunnan and show that a more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of regional monsoon and drought can be achieved by integrating GPS-derived PWV and VCD with precipitation and GRACE-derived EWH.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Location map of the 26 Continuous GPS stations in Yunnan, China, and their Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) when their GPS-derived VCD are compared with GRACE-derived VCD. This figure is generated by using the Generic Mapping Tools (Version 5.3.1).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean annual signals (left panels) and monthly time series (right panels) of PWV, precipitation, EWH, GPS-derived and GRACE-derived VCD at XIAG (upper panels) station and for the mean time series of 25 stations from 2011.0 to 2015.0 (MEAN, lower panels). To facilitate comparison with EWH, positive deviation of VCD means downward movement. All of these quantities are in millimeters. The gray rectangles indicate the monsoon season.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Maps of annual amplitude (upper panel, unit: mm) and phase (lower panel, unit: day of year) of PWV, precipitation, EWH, GPS-derived and GRACE-derived VCD. The annual phase is the day of the year (doy) when an annual signal reaching its maximum. This figure is generated by using the Generic Mapping Tools (Version 5.3.1).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Empirical relations of the annual amplitude between GPS-derived VCD and other quantities. (a) for GRACE-derived VCD, (b) for EWH, (c) for precipitation, and (d) for PWV. The red line in (d) is the linear fitting line without two abnormal stations, Lijiang (YNLJ) and Shangri-La (YNZD).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Monthly anomalies of PWV (red curves), precipitation (blue curves), EWH (green curves) and GPS-derived VCD (orange curves) at XIAG station and for MEAN, respectively. Their five-month moving average time series (black curves) are also shown.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Scatterplots of GPS-derived VCD anomalies versus EWH anomalies and PWV anomalies versus precipitation anomalies at XIAG station and for MEAN. Anomalies obtained from the time series of XIAG station from 2011.0 to 2015.0 is termed as XIAG2 station in this paper.
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