Search

Meeting the net-zero carbon emissions commitments of major economies by mid-century requires large-scale deployment of negative emission technologies (NETs). Terrestrial enhanced rock weathering on croplands (ERW) is a NET with co-benefits for agriculture, soils and ocean acidification that creates opportunities for generating income unaffected by diminishing carbon taxes as emissions approach net-zero. Here we show that ERW deployment with croplands to deliver net 2 Gt CO2 yr−1 removal approximately doubles the probability of meeting the Paris 1.5 °C target at 2100 from 23% to 42% in a high mitigation Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6 baseline climate. Carbon removal via carbon capture and storage (CCS) at the same rate had an equivalent effect. Co-deployment of ERW and CCS tripled the chances of meeting a 1.5 °C target (from 23% to 67%), and may be sufficient to reverse about one third of the surface ocean acidification effect caused by increases in atmospheric CO2 over the past 200 years. ERW increased the percentage of coral reefs above an aragonite saturation threshold of 3.5 from 16% to 39% at 2100, higher than CCS, highlighting a co-benefit for marine calcifying ecosystems. However, the degree of ocean state recovery in our simulations is highly uncertain and ERW deployment cannot substitute for near-term rapid CO2 emissions reductions.

Enhanced silicate rock weathering (ERW), deployable with croplands, has potential use for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) removal (CDR), which is now necessary to mitigate anthropogenic climate change1. ERW also has possible co-benefits for improved food and soil security, and reduced ocean acidification2–4. Here we use an integrated performance modelling approach to make an initial techno-economic assessment for 2050, quantifying how CDR potential and costs vary among nations in relation to business-as-usual energy policies and policies consistent with limiting future warming to 2 degrees Celsius5. China, India, the USA and Brazil have great potential to help achieve average global CDR goals of 0.5 to 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year with extraction costs of approximately US$80–180 per tonne of CO2. These goals and costs are robust, regardless of future energy policies. Deployment within existing croplands offers opportunities to align agriculture and climate policy. However, success will depend upon overcoming political and social inertia to develop regulatory and incentive frameworks. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of ERW deployment, including the potential for excess industrial silicate materials (basalt mine overburden, concrete, and iron and steel slag) to obviate the need for new mining, as well as uncertainties in soil weathering rates and land–ocean transfer of weathered products. A detailed assessment of the techno-economic potential of enhanced rock weathering on croplands identifies national CO2 removal potentials, costs and engineering challenges if it were to be scaled up to help meet ambitious global CO2 removal targets.

Fire provides an impulsive and stochastic pathway for carbon from the terrestrial biosphere to enter the atmosphere. Despite fire emissions being of similar magnitude to net ecosystem exchange in many biomes, even the most complex dynamic vegetation models (DVMs) embedded in general circulation models contain poor representations of fire behaviour and dynamics, such as propagation and distribution of fire sizes. A model-independent methodology is developed which addresses this issue. Its focus is on the Arctic where fire is linked to permafrost dynamics and on occasion can release great amounts of carbon from carbon-rich organic soils. Connected-component labelling is used to identify individual fire events across Canada and Russia from daily, low-resolution burned area satellite products, and the obtained fire size probability distributions are validated against historical data. This allows the creation of a fire database holding information on area burned and temporal evolution of fires in space and time. A method of assimilating the statistical distribution of fire area into a DVM whilst maintaining its fire return interval is then described. The algorithm imposes a regional scale spatially dependent fire regime on a sub-scale spatially independent model; the fire regime is described by large-scale statistical distributions of fire intensity and spatial extent, and the temporal dynamics (fire return intervals) are determined locally. This permits DVMs to estimate many aspects of post-fire dynamics that cannot occur under their current representations of fire, as is illustrated by considering the modelled evolution of land cover, biomass and net ecosystem exchange after a fire.

The magnitude of future climate change could be moderated by immediately reducing the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere as a result of energy generation and by adopting strategies that actively remove CO2 from it. Biogeochemical improvement of soils by adding crushed, fast-reacting silicate rocks to croplands is one such CO2-removal strategy. This approach has the potential to improve crop production, increase protection from pests and diseases, and restore soil fertility and structure. Managed croplands worldwide are already equipped for frequent rock dust additions to soils, making rapid adoption at scale feasible, and the potential benefits could generate financial incentives for widespread adoption in the agricultural sector. However, there are still obstacles to be surmounted. Audited field-scale assessments of the efficacy of CO2 capture are urgently required together with detailed environmental monitoring. A cost-effective way to meet the rock requirements for CO2 removal must be found, possibly involving the recycling of silicate waste materials. Finally, issues of public perception, trust and acceptance must also be addressed. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

[1] Fire is an endemic process at high latitudes, connected to a range of other land surface properties, such as land cover, biomass, and permafrost, and intimately linked to the carbon balance of the high-latitude land surface. Much of our current understanding of these links and their climate consequences is through land surface models, so it is important to ensure that for their credibility, these models should be consistent with available data. Over the vast panboreal region, a key source of information on fire is satellite data. Comparisons between satellite-based burned area data from the Global Fire Emissions Database and three dynamic vegetation models (LPJ-WM, CLM4CN, and SDGVM) indicate that all models fail to represent the observed spatial and temporal properties of the fire regime. Although the three dynamic vegetation models give comparable values of the boreal net biome production (NBP), fire emissions are found to differ by a factor 4 between the models, because of widely different estimates of burned area and because of different parameterizations of the fuel load and combustion process. Including a more realistic representation of the fire regime in the models shows that for northern high latitudes, (i) severe fire years do not coincide with source years or vice versa, (ii) the interannual variability of fire emissions does not significantly affect the interannual variability of NBP, and (iii) overall biomass values alter only slightly, but the spatial distribution of biomass exhibits changes. We also demonstrate that it is crucial to alter the current representations of fire occurrence and severity in land surface models if the links between permafrost and fire are to be captured, in particular, the dynamics of permafrost properties, such as active layer depth. This is especially important if models are to be used to predict the effects of a changing climate, because of the consequences of permafrost changes for greenhouse gas emissions, hydrology, and land cover.

The UV camera is becoming an important new tool in the armory of volcano geochemists to derive high time resolution SO2 flux measurements. Furthermore, the high camera spatial resolution is particularly useful for exploring multiple-source SO2 gas emissions, for instance the composite fumarolic systems topping most quiescent volcanoes. Here, we report on the first SO2 flux measurements from individual fumaroles of the fumarolic field of La Fossa crater (Vulcano Island, Aeolian Island), which we performed using a UV camera in two field campaigns: in November 12, 2009 and February 4, 2010. We derived ~ 0.5 Hz SO2 flux time-series finding fluxes from individual fumaroles, ranging from 2 to 8.7 t d−1, with a total emission from the entire system of ~ 20 t d−1 and ~ 13 t d−1, in November 2009 and February 2010 respectively. These data were augmented with molar H2S/SO2, CO2/SO2 and H2O/SO2 ratios, measured using a portable MultiGAS analyzer, for the individual fumaroles. Using the SO2 flux data in tandem with the molar ratios, we calculated the flux of volcanic species from individual fumaroles, and the crater as a whole: CO2 (684 t d−1 and 293 t d−1), H2S (8 t d−1 and 7.5 t d−1) and H2O (580 t d−1 and 225 t d−1).

Ultraviolet camera technology offers considerable promise for enabling 1 Hz timescale acquisitions of volcanic degassing phenomena, providing two orders of magnitude improvements on sampling frequencies from conventionally applied scanning spectrometer systems. This could, for instance enable unprecedented insights into rapid processes, such as strombolian explosions, and non-aliased corroboration with volcano geophysical data. The uptake of this technology has involved disparate methodological approaches, hitherto. As a means of expediting the further proliferation of such systems, we here study these diverse protocols, with the aim of suggesting those we consider optimal. In particular we cover: choice and set up of hardware, calibration for vignetting and for absolute concentrations using quartz SO 2 cells, the retrieval algorithm and whether one or two filters, or indeed cameras, are necessary. This work also involves direct intercomparisons with narrowband observations obtained with a scanning spectrometer system, employing a differential optical absorption spectroscopic evaluation routine, as a means of methodological validation.

In the version of this Perspective originally published, ‘acidification’ was incorrectly spelt as ‘adification’ in Fig. 4. This has now been corrected.

Miniature ultraviolet USB coupled spectrometers have become ubiquitously applied over the last decade for making volcanic SO(2) emission rate measurements. The dominantly applied unit has recently been discontinued however, raising the question of which currently available devices should now be implemented. In this paper, we consider, and make recommendations on this matter, by studying a number of inexpensive compact spectrometers in respect of measurement performance and thermal behaviour. Of the studied units, the Avaspec demonstrated the best prospects for the highest time resolution applications, but in the majority of cases, we anticipate users likely preferring the less bulky USB2000+s.

This is a selection of results of the North State project, that demonstrate how innovative methods applied to the new Sentinel data streams can be combined with models to monitor carbon and water fluxes for pan-boreal Europe.

Fire provides an impulsive and stochastic pathway for carbon from the terrestrial biosphere to enter the atmosphere. Despite fire emissions being of similar magnitude to Net Ecosystem Exchange in many biomes, even the most complex Dynamic Vegetation Models (DVMs) embedded in General Circulation Models contain poor representations of fire behaviour and dynamics such as propagation and distribution of fire sizes. A model-independent methodology is developed which addresses this issue. Its focus is on the Arctic where fire is linked to permafrost dynamics and on occasion can release great amounts of carbon from carbon-rich organic soils. Connected Component Labeling is used to identify individual fire events across Canada and Russia from daily, low-resolution burned area satellite products, and the results are validated against historical data. This allows the creation of a fire database holding information on area burned and temporal evolution of fires in space and time. A method of assimilating the statistical distribution of fire area into a DVM whilst maintaining its Fire Return Interval is then described. The algorithm imposes a regional scale spatially dependent fire regime on a sub-scale spatially independent model (point model); the fire regime is described by large scale statistical distributions of fire intensity and spatial extent, and the temporal dynamics (fire return intervals) are determined locally. This permits DVMs to estimate many aspects of post-fire dynamics that cannot occur under their current representations of fire, as is illustrated by considering the evolution of land cover, biomass and Net Ecosystem Exchange after a fire.

ISI Document Delivery No.: AG4GK Times Cited: 0 Cited Reference Count: 84 Cited References: ANDERSON EA, 1976, 19 NWS NOAA OFF HYDR Bartlett PA, 2006, ATMOS OCEAN, V44, P207, DOI 10.3137/ao.440301 BEST M, 2009, JULES TECHNICAL DOCU Best MJ, 2011, GEOSCI MODEL DEV, V4, P677, DOI 10.5194/gmd-4-677-2011 BOHREN CF, 1979, COLD REG SCI TECHNOL, V1, P47, DOI 10.1016/0165-232X(79)90018-1 Boone A, 2006, REMOTE SENS ENVIRON, V101, P482, DOI 10.1016/j.rse.2006.01.014 Brun E, 2013, J HYDROMETEOROL, V14, P203, DOI 10.1175/JHM-D-12-012.1 BULIGINA ON, 2013, DATASET ROUTINE SNOW Bulygina ON, 2011, ENVIRON RES LETT, V6, DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/045204 Burke EJ, 2013, CLIM DYNAM, V41, P1025, DOI 10.1007/s00382-012-1648-x Christensen JH, 2007, CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS, P847 Collins WD, 2006, J CLIMATE, V19, P2122, DOI 10.1175/JCLI3761.1 Cox P, 2007, SCIENCE, V317, P207, DOI 10.1126/science.1145956 Cramer W, 2001, GLOBAL CHANGE BIOL, V7, P357, DOI 10.1046/j.1365-2486.2001.00383.x Dankers R, 2011, CRYOSPHERE, V5, P773, DOI 10.5194/tc-5-773-2011 Davis RE, 1997, J GEOPHYS RES-ATMOS, V102, P29389, DOI 10.1029/97JD01335 Derksen C, 2012, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V39, DOI 10.1029/2012GL053387 Dery SJ, 2002, J GEOPHYS RES-ATMOS, V107, DOI 10.1029/2001JD001251 Essery R, 2003, GLOBAL PLANET CHANGE, V38, P161, DOI 10.1016/S0921-8181(03)00026-2 Flanner MG, 2007, J GEOPHYS RES-ATMOS, V112, DOI 10.1029/2006JD008003 Foster JL, 1997, REMOTE SENS ENVIRON, V62, P132, DOI 10.1016/S0034-4257(97)00085-0 Friedlingstein P, 2006, J CLIMATE, V19, P3337, DOI 10.1175/JCLI3800.1 *GCOS, 2004, 1219 GCOS WMO GCOS, 2010, IMPL PLAN GLOB OBS S Gelfan AN, 2004, J HYDROMETEOROL, V5, P785, DOI 10.1175/1525-7541(2004)0052.0.CO;2 Gerten D, 2004, J HYDROL, V286, P249, DOI 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2003.09.029 GIBSON JK, 1999, ERA DESCRIPTION ECMW GROISMAN PY, 1994, SCIENCE, V263, P198, DOI 10.1126/science.263.5144.198 Hancock S, 2014, J CLIMATE, V27, P624, DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00382.1 Hancock S, 2013, REMOTE SENS ENVIRON, V128, P107, DOI 10.1016/j.rse.2012.10.004 Hansen M., 2003, EARTH INTERACT, V7, P1, DOI DOI 10.1175/1087-3562 Harding RJ, 1996, J CLIMATE, V9, P2778, DOI 10.1175/1520-0442(1996)0092.0.CO;2 HARDING RJ, 2011, WATER GLOBAL CHANGE Hood E, 1999, HYDROL PROCESS, V13, P1781, DOI 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1085(199909)13:12/133.0.CO;2-C Judson A, 2000, B AM METEOROL SOC, V81, P1577, DOI 10.1175/1520-0477(2000)0812.3.CO;2 Kalnay E, 1996, B AM METEOROL SOC, V77, P437, DOI 10.1175/1520-0477(1996)0772.0.CO;2 Kanamitsu M, 2002, B AM METEOROL SOC, V83, P1631, DOI [10.1175/Bams-83-11-1631, 10.1175/BAMS-83-11-1631] KANTZAS E, 2012, MODEL ENERGY FLOWS P KOURAEV AV, 2010, MONTHLY 5 DAY FIELDS KRENKE A, 2004, FORMER SOVIET UNION Lawrence DM, 2008, J GEOPHYS RES-EARTH, V113, DOI 10.1029/2007JF000883 Lawrence DM, 2011, J ADV MODEL EARTH SY, V3, DOI 10.1029/2011MS000045 Lawrence DM, 2008, CLIM DYNAM, V30, P145, DOI 10.1007/s00382-007-0278-1 Le Quere C, 2009, NAT GEOSCI, V2, P831, DOI 10.1038/ngeo689 Ling F, 2004, COLD REG SCI TECHNOL, V38, P1, DOI 10.1016/S0165-232X(03)00057-0 Liston GE, 2006, J HYDROMETEOROL, V7, P1259, DOI 10.1175/JHM548.1 Lundberg A, 2001, THEOR APPL CLIMATOL, V70, P117, DOI 10.1007/s007040170010 LUOJUS K, 2011, GEOPH RES ABSTR, V13 McGuire AD, 1995, J BIOGEOGR, V22, P785, DOI 10.2307/2845980 Mitchell TD, 2005, INT J CLIMATOL, V25, P693, DOI 10.1002/joc.1181 Mognard NM, 2002, ANN GLACIOL-SER, V34, P15 Molotch NP, 2007, HYDROL PROCESS, V21, P1567, DOI 10.1002/hyp.6719 *NCDC, 2013, GLOB SURF SUMM DAT V Noilhan J, 1996, GLOBAL PLANET CHANGE, V13, P145, DOI 10.1016/0921-8181(95)00043-7 Oelke C, 2003, J GEOPHYS RES-ATMOS, V108, DOI 10.1029/2002JD002722 Osterkamp TE, 2007, J GEOPHYS RES-EARTH, V112, DOI 10.1029/2006JF000578 Perovich DK, 2007, J GLACIOL, V53, P201, DOI 10.3189/172756507782202919 Piao SL, 2009, NATURE, V458, P1009, DOI 10.1038/nature07944 Polyakov IV, 2002, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V29, DOI 10.1029/2001GL011111 Pomeroy JW, 1999, HYDROL PROCESS, V13, P2963, DOI 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1085(19991230)13:183.0.CO;2-9 Pomeroy JW, 1998, HYDROL PROCESS, V12, P2317, DOI 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1085(199812)12:153.0.CO;2-X Press W. H., 1992, NUMERICAL RECIPES FO Pulliainen J, 2006, REMOTE SENS ENVIRON, V101, P257, DOI 10.1016/j.rse.2006.01.002 RAZUVAEV VN, 2008, ORNLCDIAC56 US DEP E, DOI DOI 10.3334/CDIAC/CLI.NDP040 Reba ML, 2012, HYDROL PROCESS, V26, P3699, DOI 10.1002/hyp.8372 Roebber PJ, 2003, WEATHER FORECAST, V18, P264, DOI 10.1175/1520-0434(2003)0182.0.CO;2 Saito K, 2012, POLAR SCI, V6, P79, DOI 10.1016/j.polar.2012.02.003 Serreze MC, 2000, CLIMATIC CHANGE, V46, P159, DOI 10.1023/A:1005504031923 Serreze MC, 2006, CLIMATIC CHANGE, V76, P241, DOI 10.1007/s10584-005-9017-y Stroeve J, 2007, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V34, DOI 10.1029/2007GL029703 Stroeve JC, 2012, CLIMATIC CHANGE, V110, P1005, DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0101-1 Sturm M, 2001, NATURE, V411, P546, DOI 10.1038/35079180 STURM M, 1992, ARCTIC ALPINE RES, V24, P145, DOI 10.2307/1551534 Sturm M, 1997, J GLACIOL, V43, P26 Takala M, 2011, REMOTE SENS ENVIRON, V115, P3517, DOI 10.1016/j.rse.2011.08.014 Tarnocai C, 2009, GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEM CY, V23, DOI 10.1029/2008GB003327 VERNEKAR AD, 1995, J CLIMATE, V8, P248, DOI 10.1175/1520-0442(1995)0082.0.CO;2 VERSEGHY DL, 1993, INT J CLIMATOL, V13, P347, DOI 10.1002/joc.3370130402 Wania R, 2009, GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEM CY, V23, DOI 10.1029/2008GB003413 Wania R, 2009, GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEM CY, V23, DOI 10.1029/2008GB003412 Woodward FI, 2004, BIOL REV, V79, P643, DOI 10.1017/S1464793103006419 WOODWARD FI, 1995, GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEM CY, V9, P471, DOI 10.1029/95GB02432 Yang J, 2010, HYDROL EARTH SYST SC, V14, P1063, DOI 10.5194/hess-14-1063-2010 Zhang YS, 2005, J GEOPHYS RES-ATMOS, V110, DOI 10.1029/2005JD005902 Kantzas, E. Quegan, S. Lomas, M. Zakharova, E. Zakharova, Elena/N-7731-2013 Zakharova, Elena/0000-0002-2962-1439 EU [242446, 295068] This study was supported by the EU FP7 project Monarch-A (grant no. 242446), Monitoring and assessing regional climate change in high latitudes and the Arctic, and the EU FP7 project EuRuCAS (grant no. 295068), European-Russian Centre for cooperation in the Arctic and sub-Arctic environmental and climate research. 0 COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH GOTTINGEN CRYOSPHERE; An increasing number of studies have demonstrated significant climatic and ecological changes occurring in the northern latitudes over the past decades. As coupled Earth-system models attempt to describe and simulate the dynamics and complex feedbacks of the Arctic environment, it is important to reduce their uncertainties in short-term predictions by improving the description of both system processes and its initial state. This study focuses on snow-related variables and makes extensive use of a historical data set (1966-1996) of field snow measurements acquired across the extent of the former Soviet Union to evaluate a range of simulated snow metrics produced by several land surface models, most of them embedded in IPCC-standard climate models. We reveal model-specific failings in simulating snowpack properties such as magnitude, inter-annual variability, timings of snow water equivalent and evolution of snow density. We develop novel and model-independent methodologies that use the field snow measurements to extract the values of fresh snow density and snowpack sublimation, and exploit them to assess model outputs. By directly forcing the surface heat exchange formulation of a land surface model with field data on snow depth and snow density, we evaluate how inaccuracies in simulating snow metrics affect soil temperature, thaw depth and soil carbon decomposition. We also show how field data can be assimilated into models using optimization techniques in order to identify model defects and improve model performance.

[1] In contrast to the seismic and infrasonic energy released from quiescent and erupting volcanoes, which have long been known to manifest episodes of highly periodic behavior, the spectral properties of volcanic gas flux time series remain poorly constrained, due to a previous lack of hightemporal resolution gas-sensing techniques. Here we report on SO2 flux measurements, performed on Mount Etna with a novel UV imaging technique of unprecedented sampling frequency (0.5Hz), which reveal, for the first time, a rapid periodic structure in degassing from this target. These gas flux modulations have considerable temporal variability in their characteristics and involve two period bands: 40–250 and 500–1200s. A notable correlation between gas flux fluctuations in the latter band and contemporaneous seismic root-mean-square values suggests that this degassing behavior may be generated by periodic bursting of rising gas bubble trains at the magma-air interface. Citation: Tamburello, G., A. Aiuppa, A. J. S. McGonigle, P. Allard, A. Cannata, G. Giudice, E. P. Kantzas, and T. D. Pering (2013), Periodic volcanic degassing behavior: The Mount Etna example, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 4818–4822, doi:10.1002/grl.50924.

We report here on a UV-camera based field experiment performed on Stromboli volcano during 7 days in 2010 and 2011, aimed at obtaining the very first simultaneous assessment of all the different forms (passive and active) of SO 2 release from an open-vent volcano. Using the unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution of the UV camera, we obtained a 0.8 Hz record of the total SO 2 flux from Stromboli over a timeframe of ∼14 h, which ranged between 0.4 and 1.9 kg s −1 around a mean value of 0.7 kg s −1 and we concurrently derived SO 2 masses for more than 130 Strombolian explosions and 50 gas puffs. From this, we show erupted SO 2 masses have a variability of up to one order of magnitude, and range between 2 and 55 kg (average ∼20 kg), corresponding to a time integrated flux of 0.05±0.01 kg s −1 . Our experimental constraints on individual gas puff mass (0.03–0.42 kg of SO 2 , averaging 0.19 kg) are the first of their kind, equating to an emission rate ranging from 0.02 to 0.27 kg s −1 . On this basis, we conclude that puffing is two times more efficient than Strombolian explosions in the magmatic degassing process, and that active degassing (explosions+puffing) accounts for ∼23% (ranging from 10% to 45%) of the volcano's total SO 2 flux, e.g., passive degassing between the explosions contributes the majority (∼77%) of the released gas. We furthermore integrate our UV camera gas data for the explosions and puffs, with independent geophysical data (infrared radiometer data and very long period seismicity), to offer key and novel insights into the degassing dynamics within the shallow conduit systems of this open-vent volcano.

We report here on Vulcamera, a stand-alone program for the determination of volcanic SO2 fluxes using ultraviolet cameras. The code enables field image acquisition and all the required post-processing operations.

Measurements of volcanic SO2 emission rates have been the mainstay of remote-sensing volcanic gas geochemistry for almost four decades, and they have contributed significantly to our understanding of volcanic systems and their impact upon the atmosphere. The last ten years have brought step-change improvements in the instrumentation applied to these observations, which began with the application of miniature ultraviolet spectrometers that were deployed in scanning and traverse configurations, with differential optical absorption spectroscopy evaluation routines. This study catalogs the more recent empirical developments, including: ultraviolet cameras; wide-angle field-of-view differential optical absorption spectroscopy systems; advances in scanning operations, including tomography; and improved understanding of errors, in particular concerning radiative transfer. Furthermore, the outcomes of field deployments of sensors during the last decade are documented, with respect to improving our understanding of volcanic dynamics and degassing into the atmosphere.

[1] Here we present a novel spectroscopic approach to capturing, with unprecedented time resolution and accuracy, volcanic SO2 fluxes. This is based on two USB2000 spectrometers, coupled to cylindrical lens telescopes, each collecting light which has transited horizontal sections of the rising plume. We report on field data from Stromboli volcano, in which the entire emission rate from the volcano was measured, as well as flux signatures associated with individual crater explosions. The latter were integrated with seismic and thermal data, demonstrating correlations in both cases, and representing the first such geophysical-geochemical data corroboration on this timescale. Such a holistic empirical capability could significantly expedite our understanding of explosive volcanic processes.

Ultraviolet spectroscopy has been implemented for over thirty years to monitor volcanic SO2 emissions. These data have provided valuable information concerning underground magmatic conditions, which have been of utility in eruption forecasting efforts. During the last decade the traditionally used correlation spectrometers have been upgraded with miniature USB coupled UV spectrometers, opening a series of exciting new empirical possibilities for understanding volcanoes and their impacts upon the atmosphere. Here we review these technological developments, in addition to the scientific insights they have precipitated, covering the strengths and current limitations of this approach.