A Permanent GPS Ground Network for Atmospheric Research on Taiwan

The purpose of establishing GPS networks of continuously operating reference stations (CORS) is aimed to assist land surveying or crustal deformation in the early stage. However, with a fast evolving and improving path the GPS technique has been extended to accurately measure atmospheric precip itable water vapor as a core objective of many projects developed in many countries and regions such as the SuomiNet (U.S., UNAVCO), COST716 (European, COST), GEONET (Japan, GSI), ...etc. In this paper, we present the current progress of the being-set-up GPS network in Taiwan whose atmospheric profile observations mainly count on the traditional radiosonde soundings as typically seen in any other part of the world. The GPS data collected from the Taiwan dense GPS network primarily supported by Central Weather Bureau are processed using the Bernese software version 4.2. Precipitable water vapor is then derived with the auxiliary surface meteorological measurements. Time series of precipitable water are examined and analyzed. A focus on the extreme weather cases is shown as an example.