Open Access

The science of measuring airborne volcanic ash concentrations supports research in such fields as atmospheric environmental science and the modeling of atmospheric pollution from volcanoes, and is thus very valuable to the aviation industry. These measurements show large scatter directly traceable to turbulent fluctuations responsible for diffusing volcanic dust. Before semistationary components in observations can be compared to each other or to simulation results, they must be separated from fluctuations. In the design of the separation process, however, neither seasonal or diurnal periodicity nor random disturbance with known properties exists to serve as a guideline. It has been suggested that fluctuations could be eliminated through repeated convolutions of a simple 3-point filter enough times. The number of convolutions is chosen from the change in the rate of increase of a special variability parameter. When semistationary concentrations are separated from fluctuations, their statistics are compared to turbulence parameters and the autocorrelation of the series. The method is demonstrated using three measurement series from Sakurajima, Japan measured in 2013. It is concluded that this new method is simple and trustworthy where knowledge and experience of the environmental parameters can be utilized to support the results. They indicate a variability of 40% in the relative fluctuations of the PM10 and around 20% of the PM2.5. The relative fluctuations may be considered completely random, but normally distributed rather than a white noise with an evenly distributed variance spectrum.

The eruption of the Grimsvötn volcano in May 2010 posed with its ash plume a thread to the aviation in northern Europe. Because of ash plume forecasts of the VAAC London the airport of Keflavik in Iceland as well as airports in England, Scotland and Scandinavia were closed for some time, which caused the cancellation or change of about 500 flights in Europe. Even in Germany the airports of Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin were closed for several hours on 25 May 2011. During this eruption period in May 2011, a team of the Duesseldorf University of Applied Sciences, the University of Iceland, the University of Reykjavik and the IMO has performed airborne in-situ measurements over Iceland and Germany as well as ground based measurements in the south of Iceland. The ground based measurements were performed continuously during the whole eruption period at two significant positions (Skogar and Hvollsvöllur) with optical particle counters (OPCs). The measurement method was based on measuring the airborne concentrations of the classic aerosol components (PM10, PM2.5 and PM1) and TSP (total suspended particles) every 6 seconds. Additional measurement flights on Iceland were started already one day after the beginning of the eruption (twelve in-situ measurement flights) and marked the spatial and temporal spread of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. For the flights light slow flying piston engine powered airplanes where used. The flights over Iceland focused on the western part of Iceland in the region of Reykjavik and Keflavik and over the international airport in Keflavik and were mostly coordinated by ISAVIA. The measurement flights helped to keep Keflavik International Airport open for many additional hours despite of adverse predictions by the London VAAC model, because it was possible to observe the particle concentration on-line during the flights. In Germany a measurement flight was performed on 25 May 2012 over the northern part of Germany where the volcanic ash cloud was forecasted from the dispersion model of the London VAAC. This flight was performed on the behalf of the German Weather Service (DWD). The measurement flights revealed most time relative low airborne ash concentrations over western Iceland, although the groundbased measured ash concentrations in the south of Iceland nearer to the Grimsvötn were very high. In Germany the measured concentrations during the flight were low enough to be consistent with the re-opening of the airports Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin, which were closed by the authorities for several hours on 25 May 2011 because of high concentration predictions by the VAAC-model. The measurement flights clearly proved that OPCs, based on slow flying piston-motor driven aircrafts, are very suitable for the determination of airborne ash particles during volcanic eruptions. This is an important issue for air traffic safety.

Volcanic ash concentrations in the plume from Sakurajima volcano in Japan are observed from airplanes equipped with optical particle counters and GPS tracking devices. The volcano emits several puffs a day. The puffs are also recorded by the Sakurajima Volcanological Observatory. High concentrations are observed in the puffs and fallout driven by vertical air current, called streak fallout. Puffs dispersion is analyzed by the classical diffusion-advection method and a new gravitational dispersion method. The fluid mechanic of the gravitational dispersion, streak fallout, and classical diffusion-advection theory is described in three separate appendices together with methods to find the time gravitational dispersion constant and the diffusion coefficient from satellite photos. The diffusion-advection equation may be used to scale volcanic eruptions so the same eruption plumes can be scaled to constant flux and wind conditions or two eruptions can be scaled to each other. The dispersion analyses show that dispersion of volcanic plumes does not follow either theories completely. It is most likely diffusion in the interface of the plume and the ambient air, together with gravitational flattening of the plumes core. This means larger boundary concentration gradients and smaller diffusion coefficients than state of the art methods can predict.