Chapter 10 - Remote Sensing of Volcanic Ash with the GOES-R Series

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The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)-R Series observe a significant fraction of the most volcanically active region of Earth, known as the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” which includes the western portions of North and South America, East Asia, Indonesia, Micronesia, and New Zealand. Explosive volcanic eruptions often produce complex clouds composed of volcanic ash, volcanic gases, and sometimes hydrometeors. Volcanic clouds can affect weather and are a major aviation hazard. Thus, routine volcanic cloud monitoring is critical. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on the GOES-R Series are extremely valuable for detecting, tracking, and characterizing volcanic clouds, including volcanic ash, which is the constituent that poses the greatest overall hazard. In this chapter, an overview of qualitative and quantitative applications of GOES-R measurements, in support of volcanic cloud monitoring, will be given. In particular, the overview is primarily focused on the volcanic ash component of volcanic clouds.