Identification

Title

Supporting the detection and monitoring of volcanic clouds: A promising new application of global navigation satellite system radio occultation

Abstract

The altitude of volcanic clouds and the atmospheric thermal structure after volcanic eruptions are studied using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) profiles co-located with independent radiometer images of ash and sulfur dioxide plumes. We use geographically co-located RO profiles to detect the top altitude of volcanic clouds and to analyze their impact in terms of temperature change signatures. We obtained about 1300 RO profiles co-located with two representative eruptions (Puyehue 2011, Nabro 2011) and found that an anomaly technique recently developed for detecting convective cloud tops and studying the vertical thermal structure of deep convective systems can also be applied to volcanic clouds. Analyzing the atmospheric thermal structure after the eruptions, we found clear cooling signatures induced by volcanic cloud tops in the upper troposphere for the Puyehue case. For the Nabro case we detected a significant warming in the stratosphere which lasted for several months, indicating that the cloud reached the stratosphere. The results are encouraging for future large-scale use of RO data for supporting the monitoring of volcanic clouds and their impacts on weather and climate. (C) 2017 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7pr7zm7

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact