Publication Date:
2005
Description:
Eruptions can produce not only flows of incandescent material along the
slopes of a volcano but also ash plumes in the troposphere [Sparks et al., 1997] that
can threaten aircraft flying in the vicinity [Fisher et al., 1997]. To protect aircraft,
passengers, and crews, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World
Meteorological Organization created eight Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers (VAAC,
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/vaac.html) around the globe with the goal of tracking
volcanic plumes and releasing eruption alerts to airports, pilots, and companies.
Currently, the VAAC monitoring system is based mostly on the monitoring systems of any
local volcano observatories and on real-time monitoring of data acquired by
meteorological satellites. In the case of the 18 August 2000 eruption of the Miyakejima
volcano in Japan, Houlie et al. [2005] showed that the Global Positioning System(Global
Positioning System) might be used as an additional tool for monitoring volcanic plumes.
The present article indicates that the 9 March 2005 eruption of Mount St. Helens,
Washington, also produced detectable anomalies in Global Positioning System data.
Keywords:
Volcanology
;
Earthquake hazard
;
aviation
;
clouds
;
8428
;
Volcanology:
;
Explosive
;
volcanism
;
3653
;
Mineralogy
;
and
;
Petrology:
;
Fluid
;
flow
;
5494
;
Planetary
;
Sciences:
;
Solid
;
Surface
;
Planets:
;
Instruments
;
and
;
techniques
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