Eyjafjallajokull Volcanic Ash Cloud: NCAS FGAM Instruments
The Icelandic Volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, started erupting on 14th April 2010. The volcanic ash cloud produced covered much of Northern Europe for several weeks causing extensive disruption to air travel. The UK and European atmospheric communities had many instruments - both airborne and ground-based, remote sensing and in-situ - taking measurements of the ash cloud throughout this period. This dataset contains images from Aberystwyth elight and water-vapour lidars, FGAM lidar situated at Cardington and Salford Urban Built-Environment Research Base lidar.
Ash was seen frequently over Capel Dewi and Cardington during the periods 13th - 23rd April 2010 and 11th - 17th May. The ash tended to occur in single, narrow, uniform layers during the first period but in multiple, thicker, patchy layers during the second period. Work has begun on trying to determine the properties of the ash from the lidar observations. A comparison of the Raman lidar returns at 355 and 387 nm gives the lidar (optical extinction to backscatter) ratio. The unexpectedly (and controversially) large mean values for the April period (182) suggest that the ash particles were much larger and darker than those associated with eruptions of Mount Etna (mean lidar ratio values of 55). DK confirmed that similarly large values were found for observations made by an airborne lidar system.
The ultimate aim of this type of work is to be able to define the ash source function, which is required to initiate the dispersion model. For example, how much mass was ejected and to what heights? Moreover, how did the ash particles behave one they are airborne? For example, how quickly, did they start to sediment? DK clarified that high pressure over the British Isles appeared to be the driving force which caused the ash to enter the BL - not sedimentation. In order to improve the interpretation of remote sensing data, more will need to be known about the properties of the ash particles, e.g. their complex refractive index. It may be necessary to improve the lidar scattering models for this type of particle, e.g. to encompass Mie scattering.
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2014-09-19T13:24:43
- Date (Creation)
- 2014-09-19T13:24:43
- Identifier
- NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 7de58a079598413481ac3055d71db95f
- Maintenance and update frequency
- notPlanned Not planned
- Update scope
- dataset Dataset
- Keywords
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- Eyjafjallajokull
- FGAM Instruments
- GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
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- atmospheric conditions
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Spatial representation type
- grid Grid
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
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- Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
- Begin date
- 2010-04-09T23:00:00
- End date
- 2010-08-29T23:00:00
- Unique resource identifier
- WGS 84
- Distribution format
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Images are PNG formatted
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Images are PNG formatted
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- OnLine resource
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CEDA Data Catalogue Page
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DOWNLOAD
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- dataset Dataset
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Statement
- A copy of these data were made available to the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) to assist the academic community during this volcanic ash event.
- File identifier
- 7de58a079598413481ac3055d71db95f XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Character set
- 8-bit variable size UCS Transfer Format, based on ISO/IEC 10646 UTF8
- Parent identifier
- e6f5502c687f25a6c7009d4704b124b4 e6f5502c687f25a6c7009d4704b124b4
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2024-10-02T06:37:55
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
- 2.3