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Using Simulated Radiances to Understand the Limitations of Satellite-Retrieved Volcanic Ash Data and the Implications for Volcanic Ash Cloud Forecasting

Cameron Saint 1, Frances Beckett1, Fabio Dioguardi2,3, Nina Kristiansen1, Robert Tubbs1.

  • Affiliations: 1Met Office, Exeter, UK; 2British Geological Survey, The Lyell Centre, Edinburgh, UK; 3Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e Geoambientali, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Bari, Italy

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Thursday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 265

  • Programme No: 6.4.12

  • Theme 6 > Session 4

Abstract

Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers (VAACs) have generated volcanic ash forecasts for the aviation industry since the mid-1990s. The excellent spatial and temporal coverage of satellite data makes them critical to the validation of ash dispersion model forecasts. This study investigates the limitations of satellite-retrieved volcanic ash data through the production of simulated radiances for a range of ash cloud properties encompassing the satellite retrieval's sensitivity. We run a detection and retrieval algorithm (Francis et al., 2012, https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JD016788) on these simulated ash clouds and assess the sensitivity and performance of the algorithms. Expected limitations are highlighted, including a lack of sensitivity to particles larger than ∼10 μm in radius and challenges in accurately retrieving heights in the stratosphere. However, other previously poorly defined limitations are also constrained, such as the reduction in sensitivity as ash column loading increases in optically thick ash clouds and increasingly underestimated column loading when column loadings are >∼7 g m−2. We consider the implications of the identified limitations when using satellite-retrieved ash column loadings to verify dispersion model output. We show that, accounting for the limitations of the satellite retrieval, a significant proportion of mass in the model output can lie outside the sensitivity range of the satellite detection and retrieval. This demonstrates the importance of understanding observations' limitations when comparing to model output. This presentation will briefly describe the study and then discuss how the results could be utilised in operational volcanic ash forecasting processes, including model evaluation and data insertion, inversion or assimilation.