A new paper in Scientific Reports, co-authored by COMET’s Tamsin Mather, has demonstrated for the first time that airborne remote detection of volcanic ash is possible.

Airborne volcanic ash is a known hazard to aviation, but there are no current means to detect ash in-flight as the particles are too fine for on-board radar detection and, even in good visibility, ash clouds are difficult or impossible to detect by eye.

The economic cost and societal impact of the Icelandic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull generated renewed interest in finding ways to identify airborne volcanic ash in order to keep airspace open and avoid aircraft groundings.

The research, led by COMET Board Member Fred Prata, involved designing and building a bi-spectral, fast-sampling, uncooled infrared camera device (AVOID) to examine its ability to detect volcanic ash more than 50 km ahead of aircraft.

Experiments conducted over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of France involved an artificial ash cloud being created from a second aircraft, using ash from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption itself.

The measurements made by AVOID,  along with additional in situ sampling, confirmed the ability of the device to detect and quantify ash in an artificial ash cloud.  This is the first example of airborne remote detection of volcanic ash from a long-range flight test aircraft.

The full reference is Prata, A. J. et al. Artificial cloud test confirms volcanic ash detection using infrared spectral imaging. Sci. Rep. 6; doi: 10.1038/srep25620 (2016).

A huge volcanic eruption in Iceland emitted on average three times as much of a toxic gas as all European industry combined, a new study has revealed.

Discharge of lava from the eruption at Bárðarbunga volcano, starting in August 2014, released a huge mass – up to 120,000 tonnes per day – of sulphur dioxide gas.  You can watch a video of the eruption here.

These emissions can cause acid rain and respiratory problems.

Researchers hope that their study, published by the Journal of Geophysical Research, will aid understanding of how such eruptions can affect air quality in the UK.

Dr Anja Schmidt, a COMET Associate from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, who led the study, said: “The eruption discharged lava at a rate of more than 200 cubic metres per second, which is equivalent to filling five Olympic-sized swimming pools in a minute. Six months later, when the eruption ended, it had produced enough lava to cover an area the size of Manhattan.

“In the study, we were concerned with the quantity of sulphur dioxide emissions, with numbers that are equally astonishing: in the beginning, the eruption emitted about eight times more sulphur dioxide per day than is emitted from all man-made sources in Europe per day.”

The eruption last year was the biggest in Iceland for more than 200 years. It released a river of lava across northern Iceland, and lasted for six months.

The team, which also included COMET members Tamsin Mather, Elisa Carboni and Don Grainger from the University of Oxford, used data from satellite sensors to map sulphur dioxide pollution from the eruption. These were reproduced by computer simulations of the spreading gas cloud.

As well as being given off by volcanoes, sulphur dioxide is also produced by burning fossil fuels and industrial processes such as smelting. Man-made sulphur dioxide production has been falling since 1990, and was recorded at 12,000 tonnes per day in 2010.

Further information

The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The study, ‘Satellite detection, long-range transport and air quality impacts of volcanic sulfur dioxide from the 2014-2015 flood lava eruption at Bárðarbunga (Iceland)’, is published by the Journal of Geophysical Research.

COMET scientists’ Tamsin Mather, David Pyle and Roy Grainger have a new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research on the detection and quantification of volcanic ash.

This is extremely important to the aviation industry, civil defence organisations and those in peril from volcanic ash fall, using remote sensing techniques to monitor volcanic clouds and return information on their properties.

The paper presents the complex refractive index of volcanic ash at 450.0 nm, 546.7 nm and 650.0 nm from eruptions of Aso (Japan), Grímsvötn (Iceland), Chaitén (Chile), Etna (Italy), Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland), Tongariro (New Zealand), Askja (Iceland), Nisyros (Greece), Okmok (Alaska), Augustine (Alaska) and Spurr (Alaska).

You can find the full paper, Measurements of the complex refractive index of volcanic ash at 450, 546.7 and 650 nm in the Journal of Geophysical Research, doi: 10.1002/2015JD023521.