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| Titel |
Determine volcanic SO2 plume heights from satellite observations on a global scale using meteorological wind fields |
| VerfasserIn |
Viktoria Keicher, Christoph Hörmann, Holger Sihler, Ulrich Platt, Simon Warnach, Thomas Wagner |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2017
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 19 (2017) |
| Datensatznummer |
250138002
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2017-890.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Satellite observations nowadays provide the global monitoring of volcanic plumes via sulphur
dioxide (SO2) that is injected into the Earth’s atmosphere. In turn, SO2 may lead to the
formation of sulphate aerosols that can influence climate via direct and indirect radiative
effects. The quantitative retrieval of SO2 requires an accurate plume height estimate in order
to constrain total amounts for such events.
However, especially for volcanic eruptions the vertical SO2 profile is typically unknown
because of the initial conditions (e.g. individual explosions over an extended time period may
lead to different gas layer altitudes). In recent years, satellite observations helped to improve
global SO2 estimates, but still large uncertainties exist. Passive satellite remote sensing
instruments in the UV/vis spectral range for example offer the opportunity to observe the
location of a plume in two dimensions, but information about the corresponding height is
limited. To gain further information about these plume profiles is not only interesting for the
quantitative interpretation of satellite observations, but also in itself (e.g. to assess the
radiative effect of volcanic plumes).
Here, we present first results for a newly developed and systematic approach using
the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model (HYSPLIT) in
combination with data for selected volcanic SO2 plumes originating from different
volcanoes. The main plume informations retrieved by the satellite (i.e. plume location
and observation time) are used as initial input parameters in order to estimate the
plume’s profile at the time of the measurements. The resulting trajectories can be used
to constrain the eruption time and height. First comparisons show that retrieved
results are in good agreement with direct local observations and reports. While the
algorithm has been so far only applied to data from the second generation Global Ozone
Monitoring Instrument (GOME-2), it may be generally applied to data from other satellite
instruments like OMI or the upcoming TROPOMI Sentinel-5 precursor) instrument. |
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