But there are also drawbacks to relying on satellite data, which were outlined in the paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
In particular, atmospheric disturbances can affect measurements and introduce errors into the data.
Dr Sun said: “We can monitor the movement of the ground caused by earthquakes or volcanoes using RADAR remote sensors, but while we have access to a lot of remote sensing data, the RADAR waves must go through the atmosphere to get recorded at the sensor.
“And the propagation path will likely be affected by that atmosphere, especially if the climate is tropical with a lot of water vapour and clouds variations in time and space.”
To combat this, the researchers used machine learning to teach an AI how to fill in the gaps in “noisy” satellite data.