Observations of the altitude of the volcanic plume during the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, April–May 2010

Abstract

Abstract. The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 lasted for 39 days, 14 April–23 May. The eruption had two explosive phases separated by a phase with lava formation and reduced explosive activity. The height of the plume was monitored every 5 min with a C-band weather radar located in Keflavík International Airport, 155 km distance from the volcano. Furthermore, several web cameras were mounted with a view of the volcano, and their images saved every five seconds. Time series of the plume-top altitude were constructed from the radar observations and images from a web camera located in the village Hvolsvöllur at 34 km distance from the volcano. This paper presents the independent radar and web camera time series and performs cross validation. The results show good agreement between the time series for the range when both series are available. However, while the radar altitudes are semi-discrete the data availability was much higher than for the web camera, indicating how essential weather radars are as eruption plume monitoring devices. The echo top radar series of the altitude of the volcanic plume are publicly available from the Pangaea Data Publisher (http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.760690).

35 yr of stratospheric aerosol measurements at Garmisch-Partenkirchen: from Fuego to Eyjafjallajökull, and beyond

“…12 shows that ten of the 27 trajectories pass the volcano at distances corresponding to less than one degree in longitude and latitude. Four of these trajectories even meet the requirement of passing Eyjafjallajökull during the period of strong eruptions during the first half of 16 April and reaching at least 8.7 km (Arason et al, 2011). Three of them could be identified in Fig.…”

“…13. This behaviour continued until the end of our calculations at 04:00 CET on 18 April, which was determined by the end of the strong eruptions (Arason et al, 2011). An additional branch formed, first moving towards Greenland and then propagating to Europe.…”

“…The advection to Garmisch-Partenkirchen was direct due to an anti-cyclonic flow pattern, and additional stratospheric aerosol was observed. The top altitude of the ash cloud reached over the volcano is reported to range between 8.5 and 9.3 km (Arason et al, 2011) during the first phase. Given the low tropopause in Arctic spring, it has been reasonable to assume some stratospheric contribution, which could explain our observation.…”

Spatial evaluation of volcanic ash forecasts using satellite observations

“…These are known as eruption source parameters (ESPs) and include plume rise height, mass eruption rate, vertical profile of the plume, particle density, and particle size distribution. In the simulations presented in this paper the plume height is based on observations by the Icelandic Meteorological Office's C-band radar (Arason et al, 2011) located at Keflavík International Airport. Note that the height of the plume varies over the time of the simulation presented here.…”

Inclusion of ash and SO<sub>2</sub> emissions from volcanic eruptions in WRF-Chem: development and some applications

“…A detailed evaluation of this case is presented in Webley et al (2012). WRF-Chem was initialized with hourly mean values of available 5 min time series of the echo top altitudes of the eruption plume derived from a C-band weather radar located in Keflavík International Airport, 155 km distance from the volcano (Arason et al, 2011). Two sets of runs were performed using a S1 and a S2 ESP type particle size distribution (compare Table 2), and a source mass according to Eq.…”