A multi-sensor satellite-based archive of the largest SO₂ volcanic eruptions since 2006

Abstract

Abstract. We present a multi-sensor archive collecting spatial and temporal information about volcanic SO2 clouds generated by the 11 largest eruptions of this century. The detection and monitoring of volcanic clouds are an important topic for aviation management, climate issues and weather forecasts. Several studies focusing on single eruptive events exist, but no archive available at the moment combines quantitative data from as many instruments. We archived and collocated the SO2 vertical column density estimations from three different satellite instruments (AIRS, IASI and GOME-2), atmospheric parameters as vertical profiles from the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Radio Occultations (RO), and the cloud-top height and aerosol type from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). Additionally, we provide information about the cloud-top height from three different algorithms and the atmospheric anomaly due to the presence of the cloud. The dataset is gathering 206 d of SO2 data, collocated with 44 180 backscatter profiles and 64 764 radio occultation profiles. The modular structure of the archive allows an easy collocation of the datasets according to the users' needs, and the cross-comparison of the datasets shows different consistency of the parameters estimated with different sensors and algorithms, according to the sensitivity and resolution of the instruments. The data described here are published with a DOI at https://doi.org/10.5880/fidgeo.2020.016 (Tournigand et al., 2020a).