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Stratospheric volcanic ash emissions from the 13 February 2014 Kelut eruption
Author(s) -
Kristiansen N. I.,
Prata A. J.,
Stohl A.,
Carn S. A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2014gl062307
Subject(s) - volcanic ash , stratosphere , environmental science , volcano , atmospheric sciences , satellite , meteorology , geology , geochemistry , physics , astronomy
Mount Kelut (Indonesia) erupted explosively around 15:50 UT on 13 February 2014 sending ash and gases into the stratosphere. Satellite ash retrievals and dispersion transport modeling are combined within an inversion framework to estimate the volcanic ash source term and to study ash transport. The estimated source term suggests that most of the ash was injected to altitudes of 16–17 km, in agreement with space‐based lidar data. Modeled ash concentrations along the flight track of a commercial aircraft that encountered the ash cloud indicate that it flew under the main ash cloud and encountered maximum ash concentrations of 9 ± 3 mg m −3 , mean concentrations of 2 ± 1 mg m −3 over a period of 10–11 min of the flight, giving a dosage of 1.2 ± 0.3 g s m −3 . Satellite data could not be used directly to observe the ash cloud encountered by the aircraft, whereas inverse modeling revealed its presence.