Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 14: Methods - Data evaluation and Modelling

UP 14.1: Talk

Thursday, March 10, 2016, 14:15–14:30, H41

Determining volcanic SO₂ plume heights in satellite observations using meteorological wind fields — •Viktoria Keicher^{1, 2}, Christoph Hörmann¹, Holger Sihler¹, Ulrich Platt², and Thomas Wagner¹ — ¹Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany — ²Institute of Environmetal Physics, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Satellite observations 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.

In recent years, satellite observations helped to improve global SO₂ estimates. Passive satellite remote sensing offers the opportunity to observe the location of a plume in two dimensions, but information about the corresponding height is sparse. This information is important for the quantitative interpretation of satellite observations and to assess the radiative effect of volcanic plumes.

Here, we present first results for a newly developed approach using the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model (HYSPLIT) in combination with data for different volcanic SO₂ plumes as observed by the second generation Global Ozone Monitoring Instrument (GOME-2). The main plume information that can be retrieved are used as input parameters in order to estimate the plume’s profile at the time of the measurements. We use the calculated trajectories to further estimate eruption time and height for several case studies.