Detecting volcanic sulfur dioxide plumes in the Northern Hemisphere using the Brewer spectrophotometer, other networks, and satellite observations

This paper demonstrates that SO2 columnar amounts have significantly increased following the five largest volcanic eruptions of the past decade in the Northern Hemisphere. A strong positive signal was detected by all the existing networks either ground based (Brewer, EARLINET, AirBase) or from satellites (OMI, GOME-2). The study particularly examines the adequacy of the existing Brewer network to detect SO2 plumes of volcanic origin in comparison to other networks and satellite platforms. The comparison with OMI and GOME-2 SO2 space-borne retrievals shows statistically significant agreement between the Brewer network data and the collocated satellite overpasses. It is shown that the Brewer instrument is capable of detecting significant columnar SO2 increases following large volcanic eruptions, when SO2 levels rise well above the instrumental noise of daily observations, estimated to be of the order of 2 DU. A model exercise from the MACC project shows that the large increases of SO2 over Europe following the Bárðarbunga eruption in Iceland were not caused by local sources or ship emissions but are clearly linked to the eruption. We propose that by combining Brewer data with that from other networks and satellites, a useful tool aided by trajectory analyses and modeling could be created which can be used to forecast high SO2 values both at ground level and in air flight corridors following future eruptions.