Satellite remote sensing of volcanic ash cloud in complicated meteorological conditions

Abstract

Volcanic ash cloud has serious impacts on aviation. With volcanic ash dispersion, it also has a profound and long-term impact on climate and the environment. A new volcanic ash cloud detecting method (SWIR-TIR Volcanic Ash method, STVA) is presented that uses satellite images of Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI) and Visible and Infrared Radiometer (VIRR) on board the second generation Polar-Orbiting meteorological satellite of China (FY-3A). STVA is applied in detecting Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption. Compared with the traditional Split Window Temperature Difference method (SWTD), the results show that STVA is more sensitive to volcanic ash cloud than SWTD and can fairly extract volcanic ash information from the background of meteorological cloud and the ocean. Ash Radiance Index (ARI) and Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI) derived from Metop-A satellite images are used to validate the performance of STVA. It is shown that STVA provides similar results with ARI and AAI. FY-3A/MERSI, VIRR and Terra /MODIS data are used to test STVA and SWTD. It is demonstrated that STVA derived from FY-3A satellite data is more effective in complicated meteorological conditions. This study shows great potential of using China’s own new generation satellite data in future global volcanic ash cloud monitoring operation.