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Tall clouds from small eruptions: the sensitivity of eruption height and fine ash content to tropospheric instability

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Abstract

A critical factor in successfully monitoring and forecasting volcanic ash dispersion for aviation safety is the height reached by eruption clouds, which is affected by environmental factors, such as wind shear and atmospheric instability. Following earlier work using the Active Tracer High Resolution Atmospheric Model for strong Plinian eruptions, this study considered a range of eruption strengths in different atmospheres. The results suggest that relatively weak volcanic eruptions in the moist tropics can trigger deep convection that transports volcanic material to 15–20 km. For the same volcanic strength there can be ~9 km difference between eruption heights in moist tropical and dry subpolar environments (a larger height difference than previously suggested), which appears consistent with observations. These results suggest that eruption intensity should not be estimated from eruption height alone for tropospheric eruptions and also that the average height of volcanic eruptions may increase if the tropical atmospheric belt widens in a changing climate. Ash aggregation is promoted by hydrometeors (particularly liquid water), so the smaller modelled eruptions in moist atmospheres, which have a relatively small ash content for their height and water content, result in a relatively small proportion of fine ash in the dispersing cloud when compared to a dry atmosphere. This in turn makes the ash clouds much more difficult to detect using remote sensing than those in dry atmospheres. Overall, a weak eruption in the tropics is more likely to produce a plume above cruising levels for civil aviation, harder to detect and track, but with a lower concentration of fine ash than a mid-latitude or polar equivalent. There is currently no defined ‘acceptable’ concentration of ash for aircraft, but as these results suggest low-grade encounters in the tropics from undetected clouds are likely, it would be desirable to explore that issue.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Larry Mastin and one anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful reviews of an earlier draft of this paper. The first author would like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and Monash University in pursuing this work, and particularly that of Geoffrey Garden and Michael Reeder. We would also like to thank Rebecca Patrick for assistance with analysis of the Soputan eruption.

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  1. Michael S. Richards

    Present address: Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City, OK, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northern Territory Regional Office, Bureau of Meteorology, PO Box 40050, Casuarina, NT, 0811, Australia

    Andrew Tupper

  2. School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Vic, Australia

    Andrew Tupper

  3. Deutsche IPCC-Koordinierungsstelle Projektträger im DLR Umwelt, Kultur, Nachhaltigkeit Heinrich-Konen-Str.153227, Bonn, Germany

    Christiane Textor

  4. Centre Atmospheric Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Michael Herzog & Hans-F. Graf

  5. Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Michael S. Richards

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  1. Andrew Tupper
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Correspondence to Andrew Tupper.

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Tupper, A., Textor, C., Herzog, M. et al. Tall clouds from small eruptions: the sensitivity of eruption height and fine ash content to tropospheric instability. Nat Hazards 51, 375–401 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9433-9

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