Enhancing Resilience Volcanic Event: Raman Lidar Expertise in Mitigating Volcanic Ash Threats

Narrative

The 2010 eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull caused widespread disruption to air travel across Europe for several days and had a significant financial impact. Following the eruption and the volcanic ash emergency, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) awarded the UK Met Office a large contract to build a network of lidars that would give detailed information on the ash cloud if a similar eruption occurred again. Lidar technology can be used to monitor and track ash clouds produced by volcanic eruptions, providing valuable information for aviation safety.

As one of the UK’s experts on Raman Lidar, Professor Vaughan from the University of Manchester contributed to drawing up the specifications for these lidars and evaluating the tender responses. Professor Vaughan has examined data from the lidar network to verify that the instruments are working correctly, and has continued to advise the Met Office on the optimal use of the lidars. The Met Office has recently established a network of 10 single-wavelength, ground-based N2 Raman lidars distributed across the UK, improving their ash aerosol remote sensing capability. The primary aim of the network is the detection and quantification of volcanic ash aerosols during a volcanic event, thus increasing the nation’s resilience to a future volcanic event. The lidar data are available for the research community through the NERC data centre CEDA. Professor Vaughan has also been engaged in a lidar expert group to facilitate knowledge transfer in the lidar area.

Impact date	1 Jun 2013 → 2017
Category of impact	Environmental, Technological
Impact level	Adoption