There are over 60 active volcanic systems in Europe and European overseas territories including Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Reunion and Tristan da Cunha. Iceland alone has 32 active volcanic systems. In 2010 and 2011, the Eyjafjallajökull and Grímsvötn volcanoes erupted sending ash plumes over northern Europe. Resulting closure of airspace in 2010 led to a global economic loss of an estimated $5 billion USD.

During volcanic eruptions an urgent priority is to characterise the proximal plume characteristics, such as mass flux, plume height, particle and gas characteristics. These data are for near real time interpretation of volcanic plume characteristics and are used to drive operational models such as those used by VAACs and agencies responsible for civil hazard warnings.

The Volcano-Atmospheric Interaction theme is centred around research and collaboration on two principle topics:

  1. Multidisciplinary assimilation of data for volcanic ash transport models and source-term parametrization
  2. Interaction of volcanic products with atmosphere including physical chemical aspects in the near field of a volcano and far-field evolution

Volcano-atmospheric interaction activities involve:

  • Networking atmospheric gas and aerosol observations (definitions of data, products and metadata standards)
  • Consolidation of geochemical gas monitoring across volcano observatories (identify best-practice in geochemical gas monitoring using the combined expertise from volcano observatories and research institute scientists)
  • Connecting the volcanological community with Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres
  • Characterisation of grain-size parameters, determination of mass eruption rate and assimilation of geophysical data to initialize Volcanic Ash Transport and Dispersal Models
  • Development of tools as well as evaluating and selecting existing tools and techniques most suitable to rapidly combine and interpret meteorological measurements and ground-based remote sensing of volcanic ash
  • Volcano pre-eruptive detection schemes (development of automatic algorithms for correlating real-time analysis and seismic and infrasound signals)
  • Physical and virtual access to research infrastructures and tools including on-site modelling resources, magma ascent models, and satellite-image derived SO2 flux time series

Volcano-atmospheric interaction is primarily the subject of the following Work Packages:

Activities

  • Networking atmospheric gas and aerosol observations
  • Consolidation of geochemical gas monitoring across VOs
  • Connecting the volcanological community with Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres
  • Volcano pre-eruptive detection schemes
Transnational Accesses
  • Access to the Icelandic Volcano Observatory
  • Access to University of Iceland
  • Access to the Italian Volcano Observatories and Research Institutions
  • Access to Azores Volcano Observatory
  • Access to Guadeloupe, Martinique and Piton del la Furnaise Volcano Observatories
  • Access to the Volcano Dynamics Computational Centre
  • • Physical access to on-site modelling resources and to hazard assessment tools
Virtual Accesses
  • Virtual Access to EPOS VO-TCS
  • Virtual access to satellite-image derived SO2 flux time series
  • Access to the Volcano Dynamics Computational Centre