In a new study published in Scientific Reports this week, a team led by researchers from Michigan Technological University created the first, truly global inventory for volcanic sulfur dioxide emissions, using data from the Dutch-Finnish Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Earth Observing System Aura satellite launched in 2004. While this number is higher than the previous estimate made in the late 1990s based on ground measurements, the new research includes data on more volcanoes, including some that scientists have never visited, and it is still lower than human emissions of sulfur dioxide pollution levels. He led the effort to catalog sulfur dioxide emissions sources from human activities and volcanoes and to trace emissions derived from the satellite observations back to their source by using wind data. But the satellite data could allow us to target new ground-based measurements at unmonitored volcanoes more effectively, leading to better estimates of volcanic carbon dioxide emissions." Ground-based data are more detailed, and in areas like Central America where large sulfur dioxide-emitting volcanoes are close together, they better distinguish which specific volcano gas plumes come from. The work highlights the necessity of consistent long-term data, according to co-author Nick Krotkov, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which produces the sulfur dioxide data from the Aura satellite.
Volcanoes erupt, they spew ash, their scarred flanks sometimes run with both lava and landslides. But only occasionally. A less dramatic but important process is continuous gas emissions from volcanoes; in other words, as they exhale. A number of volcanoes around the world continuously exhale water vapor laced with heavy metals, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, among many other gases. Of these, sulfur dioxide is the easiest to detect from space. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170309150624.htm
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