RETRIEVAL OF TROPOSPHERIC ASH CLOUDS OF MT. ETNA FROM AVHRR DATA

This paper focuses on three eruptiveevents of the Mt. Etna volcano: July 22nd 1998,April 26th 2000 and the recent eruption of July-August 2001. Such eruptions may be a severethreat to aircraft safety, as in the April 2000event. From the AVHRR visible images theheight of the top of the clouds is estimated,using geometrical methods, knowing bothNOAA satellite and Sun positions. The resultsare then compared with information derivedfrom radio-sounding data etc.. The volcanic ashparticles with diameters of 1-10 mm are notdetectable by aircraft radar but they may beremotely sensed using thermal infrared data.The well-known algorithm, based on theAVHRR channel 4 and channel 5 brightnesstemperatures difference [Prata, 1989; Schneideret al. 1994], is here applied to highlight the ashclouds of Mt. Etna volcano. Even though it wastypically used to detect and follow the volcanicclouds of stratospheric eruptions, here it is succesfullytested for tropospheric plume too.Some good results of this technique are presentedtogether with some basic problems. Thiswork points out that it could be useful to preparea procedure to monitor Mt. Etna eruption cloudsanalysing TIR data. Such a procedure shouldautomatically alert (in real time, using the newMeteosat Second Generation satellite) and indicatethe cloud direction on the basis of atmosphericradio-sounded and/or predicted data.