Research
New uses of geodetic, oceanographic and remote-sensing observations for hydrosphere science.
Featured research · GNSS-IR
GNSS Interferometric Reflectometry exploits interference between direct and sea-surface-reflected navigation signals. A one-year experiment at the E.B. Scripps Memorial Pier used GPS, GLONASS and Galileo to retrieve water level and significant wave height from a standard geodetic antenna.
The multi-GNSS approach increased retrieval density, and the 2023 study reported corrected water-level RMS errors of about 9.4 cm and significant-wave-height RMS errors of about 15 cm against co-located conventional instruments.
Field sensing · Post-tsunami survey
Field observations after the 27 February 2010 Chile tsunami documented inundation limits, runup, flow depth, hydrodynamic evidence, and damage in San Juan Bautista on Robinson Crusoe Island.
The survey combined GPS-based spatial measurements, physical traces left by the tsunami, infrastructure inspection, and eyewitness information. This type of post-event field sensing provides direct constraints for inundation models and coastal-hazard interpretation.
Near-source ocean-bottom pressure records are analyzed to separate seismic and tsunami signals and investigate whether observations collected in the first minutes after an earthquake can improve characterization of the source and expected tsunami.
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar is used to estimate coseismic deformation and earthquake source characteristics. Applications have included the 2018 Palu and 2020 Mexico earthquakes and related tsunami modeling.
Videos and other opportunistic observations can provide quantitative information where conventional instruments are sparse. The Palu tsunami work demonstrated their value for source reconstruction; that tsunami-specific research is organized under the Tsunami section.