The study of typhoon path in Taiwan region using precise point positioning technique

Typhoons are the most serious weather systems that threaten Taiwan annually. There are many meteorological sensors available for studying the patterns and characteristics of a Typhoon. Recently, the studies concerning the use of GPS as an alternative meteorological sensor have become extremely active due to devastating impact of the global climate changes. GPS signal can provide meteorological parameter mainly by troposphere. In addition, the Precise Point positioning technique is one of the novel methodologies attracting researchers from many aspects of GPS related study recently. Therefore, this study aims at using the measurements collected at the reference stations of the e-GPS RTK network set up by the Land Survey and Mapping Center, Ministry of the Interior, Executive Yuen of ROC, during the passage of typhoon SAPAT which landed on the east coast of Taiwan around August 17^th 2007. The data processing strategy is to process the measurements collected at those stations with PPP technique to estimate the variations of the coordinates as well as the ZTD estimated at those sites. The preliminarily results illustrate the strong correlations between the variations of ZTD and the passage of typhoon. In addition, several characteristics of typhoon are identified through the spatial and temporal analysis of the ZTD estimated by PPP technique.