Open‐vent volcanic systems with active degassing are particularly effective at producing infrasound that exhibits resonant tones controlled by the geometry of the volcano's crater. Changes in the infrasound character can thus provide constraints on a crater's lava level, which may vary dynamically in the lead‐up to an eruption. Here we show that the increasing frequency content and damping characteristics of the resonant infrasound at Volcán Villarrica (Chile) relate to lava lake position in its crater/conduit preceding its 2015 eruption. We model the acoustic response of Villarrica's crater to determine that the lake began to rise on 27 February and reached the flared upper part of Villarrica's crater before oscillating during the two days prior to the 3 March paroxysm and 1.5 km‐high lava fountain. This study demonstrates the utility of remote infrasound monitoring for future eruptions of Villarrica and other analogous open‐vent volcanoes.
We characterize and interpret a new type of infrasound signal originating from the summit of Volcán Cotopaxi (Ecuador) that was primarily observed between September 2015 and March 2016, following the 2015 eruptive period. This infrasound waveform is a slowly decaying sinusoid with exceptional low‐frequency (fp = 0.2 Hz) and high quality factor (Q = ~10) and resembles the shape of tornillo seismic waveforms. The repeating events, occurring about once per day in early 2016, are stable in frequency content, and we attribute them to excitation of a vertical‐walled crater, with radius of about 125 m and length of 300 m. Spectral properties of the tornillo permit constraints on crater sound speed (335 m/s ± 6%) and temperature (4–32°C). The initial polarity of the tornillos is predominantly a rarefaction and could reflect repeating crater bottom collapse events (implosions) or explosion sources whose infrasound is heavily modulated by the crater's pipe‐like geometry.
In December 2018, Mount Etna (Italy) experienced a period of increased eruptive activity that culminated in a fissure eruption on the southeast flank. After the onset of the flank eruption, the peak frequency of the summit infrasound signals decreased while resonance increased. We invert infrasound observations for crater geometry and show that crater depth and radius increased during the eruption, which suggests that the flank eruption drained magma from the summit and that eruptive activity led to erosion of the crater wall. By inverting the entire infrasound amplitude spectra rather than just the peak frequency, we are able to place additional constraints on the crater geometry and invert for, rather than assume, the crater shape. This work illustrates how harmonic infrasound observations can be used to obtain hightemporal-resolution information about crater geometry and can place constraints on complex processes occurring in the inaccessible crater region during eruptive activity. Plain Language Summary Volcanoes generate low-frequency sound waves in the atmosphere (infrasound) that can be recorded by specialized microphones. Much like giant musical instruments, the character of the sound can depend upon the shape and size of the crater. Mount Etna erupted in December 2018 with lava flowing out a fissure on the flank of the volcano. The character of the sound changed after the flank eruption. We study the change in the character of the sound in order to estimate how the shape of the volcanic crater at the summit of Mount Etna changed. Our results show that the crater got deeper and wider, which suggests that the eruption of lava on the flank of the volcano drained magma from the summit area. This work shows how infrasound observations can track changes in crater geometry and provide insight about the magma plumbing systems beneath volcanoes.
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