Plume velocity determination for volcanic SO2 flux measurements

[1] Ground based volcanic SO2 fluxes provide important insights into the behaviour of volcanoes, and their impacts upon the atmosphere. In order to compute a flux, the plume transport speed, and direction, must be known. In practice these are typically assumed to equal, respectively: (A) a ground based anemometer reading, and (B) the bearing of the vector between the volcanic gas source and the position on the downwind plume cross-section where the gas concentration is highest. However, use of these proxies is open to question, and they can introduce large errors (possibly > 100%), thereby significantly reducing the utility of the derived fluxes. Here we present direct spectroscopic measurements of volcanic plume velocity; the data were obtained using three ultraviolet spectrometers, at Masaya volcano, Nicaragua, during January 2004. We estimate that flux measurements with overall error budgets < 10% are readily achievable with this approach.

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