Abstract
Abstract. In a companion paper (Horváth et al., 2021), we introduced a new technique to estimate volcanic eruption column height from extremely oblique near-limb geostationary views. The current paper demonstrates and validates the technique in a number of recent eruptions, ranging from ones with weak columnar plumes to subplinian events with massive umbrella clouds and overshooting tops that penetrate the stratosphere. Due to its purely geometric nature, the new method is shown to be unaffected by the limitations of the traditional brightness temperature method, such as height underestimation in subpixel and semitransparent plumes, ambiguous solutions near the tropopause temperature inversion, or the lack of solutions in undercooled plumes. The side view height estimates were in good agreement with plume heights derived from ground-based video and satellite stereo observations, suggesting they can be a useful complement to established techniques.
Highlights
In Part 1 (Horváth et al, 2021), we gave a detailed description of our geometric method that exploits the near-limb portion of daytime geostationary imagery to derive point estimates of eruption column height in the vicinity of the vent
The method can be applied to data from any geostationary instrument, but in practice it is best suited to the latest-generation Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) aboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) series and the almost identical Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) aboard the Himawari thirdgeneration satellites
The side view plume heights are compared with heights from the basic temperature method, GOES-17– Himawari-8 stereo retrievals, and where available estimates from ground-based video footage
Summary
In Part 1 (Horváth et al, 2021), we gave a detailed description of our geometric method that exploits the near-limb portion of daytime geostationary imagery to derive point estimates of eruption column height in the vicinity of the vent. Such oblique observations offer close-to-orthogonal side views of vertical columns protruding from the Earth ellipsoid and thereby facilitate a simple height-by-angle technique. In Part 2, we apply the side view height estimation to seven volcanic eruptions from 2019 and 2020, which were observed by GOES-17 near the limb of the full disk image. Horváth et al.: Geometric estimation of volcanic eruption column height – Part 2
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