GPS Used To Monitor Continental Drift

Posted by simoniker on Wednesday June 4, 2003 @10:27PM from the landmass-geocaching-over-millenia dept.

metz2000 writes "BBC News is reporting that a team of scientists from Nottingham (UK) are using GPS to measure sea levels and continental drift. The team has around 50 stations across the UK, and use GPS technology to track miniscule changes in altitude and location. This allows the team to gain an understanding of how the UK landmass is likely to change over the coming centuries. They have discovered that the British Isles are tilting, with the north of the country gaining altitude and the south of the country 'sinking'."

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Re:Accuracy by d-Orb · 2003-06-04 22:35 · Score: 5, Informative

I guess that they are using differential GPS, by which the time delay at a known location is compared to the time-delay at the location of interest. This enables for very accurate estimation of where you are.

On the other hand, at least in California (where they have a GPS network for earthquake monitoring), the network might well be permanent, hence you can do a nice sort of averaging over time. We have found that even with normal GPS, you get nice accuracies over a time period.