Sulphur dioxide fluxes from Papua New Guinea's volcanoes

Abstract

Papua New Guinea (PNG) hosts some of the most prolific degassing volcanoes in the world. Collectively, they are thought to be responsible for a significant contribution of sulfur dioxide to the regional and global atmosphere. Despite their importance, very few measurements of SO2 fluxes from PNG volcanoes have been made in the past, leading to uncertainty in estimates of total global volcanic sulfur budgets. We report here sulphur dioxide flux measurements obtained by ultraviolet spectroscopy during July and August 2003 for the following PNG volcanoes: Tavurvur, Ulawun, Pago, Langila, Bagana and Manam. We found fluxes of 1.3, 7.4, 1.4, 2.9, 23 and 2.1 kg s−1, respectively, for these sources. This amounts to a total of 38 kg s−1 of SO2, constituting some 6–9% and 7–12% of the estimated global time‐integrated volcanic emissions to the atmosphere, and troposphere, respectively.

SO2 depletion in tropospheric volcanic plumes

“…Because of its abundance in volcanic plumes, low ambient concentrations and highly structured absorption features from 260-340 nm [Manatt and Lane, 1993] SO 2 is also well suited for volcano plume remote sensing . During the last thirty years many studies have been conducted with correlation spectrometers [Stoiber et al, 1983], and more recently compact charge coupled device (CCD) detector based instruments [McGonigle et al, 2002[McGonigle et al, , 2004Galle et al, 2003], to monitor remotely volcanic SO 2 fluxes for purposes of eruption prediction, and to investigate the environmental and atmospheric impacts of these emissions.…”

First determination of magma-derived gas emissions from Bromo volcano, eastern Java (Indonesia)

“…1b). van Gerven and Pichler (1995) distinguish five stages in the evolution of the Tengger system, and consider that intra-caldera (Bromo) activity started sometimes prior to~1800 yrs B.P.. More than 60 explosive eruptions (mainly of VEI = 2) have occurred at Bromo over the past four centuries, most recently in 2000, 2004-2012CVGHM Reports). In spite of this recurrent activity, available information on Bromo in the international geological literature is relatively scarce.…”

“…For instance, Hilton et al (2002) estimated an Indonesian CO 2 flux of~0.36 Tg/yr that is poorly constrained from very few data. In summary, given the intense volcanic activity in Indonesia and the important gas emissions sustained by other arc segments in the southwest Pacific, such as Papua New Guinea (McGonigle et al, 2004;McCormick et al, 2012) and Vanuatu (Bani et al, 2012), increasing the data base for volcanic gas compositions and fluxes in Indonesia is essential to refining current global volcanic gas inventories (Hilton et al, 2002;Burton et al, 2013;Shinohara, 2013).…”

Sulfur dioxide emissions from Papandayan and Bromo, two Indonesian volcanoes

“…Over the last ten years, the increasing development in the field of remote sensing has improved our knowledge on the distribution of volcanic volatile sources across the earth and even on the remote and less accessible edifices (McGonigle et al, 2004;Mather et al, 2006;Bani et al, 2012;McCormick et al, 2012). But still many volcanoes on earth have never had their degassing rates evaluated.…”