ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-11-9503-2011 The Eyjafjöll explosive volcanic eruption from a microwave weather radar perspective Marzano F. S. 1 2 Lamantea M. 1 Montopoli M. 2 3 Di Fabio S. 2 4 Picciotti E. 4 Department of Information Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy Centre of Excellence CETEMPS, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of L'Aquila, Italy HIMET, L'Aquila, Italy 16 09 2011 11 18 9503 9518 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/9503/2011/acp-11-9503-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/9503/2011/acp-11-9503-2011.pdf

The sub-glacial Eyjafjöll explosive volcanic eruptions of April and May 2010 are analyzed and quantitatively interpreted by using ground-based weather radar data and the Volcanic Ash Radar Retrieval (VARR) technique. The Eyjafjöll eruptions have been continuously monitored by the Keflavík C-band weather radar, located at a distance of about 155 km from the volcano vent. Considering that the Eyjafjöll volcano is approximately 20 km from the Atlantic Ocean and that the northerly winds stretched the plume toward the mainland Europe, weather radars are the only means to provide an estimate of the total ejected tephra. The VARR methodology is summarized and applied to available radar time series to estimate the plume maximum height, ash particle category, ash volume, ash fallout and ash concentration every 5 min near the vent. Estimates of the discharge rate of eruption, based on the retrieved ash plume top height, are provided together with an evaluation of the total erupted mass and volume. Deposited ash at ground is also retrieved from radar data by empirically reconstructing the vertical profile of radar reflectivity and estimating the near-surface ash fallout. Radar-based retrieval results cannot be compared with ground measurements, due to the lack of the latter, but further demonstrate the unique contribution of these remote sensing products to the understating and modelling of explosive volcanic ash eruptions.

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