The 2015 Calbuco Volcanic Cloud Detection Using GNSS Radio Occultation and Satellite Lidar

Explosive volcanic eruptions can generate ash and gas clouds rising to the stratosphere and dispersing on a global scale. Such volcanic features are at the origin of many hazards including aircraft engine damages, ash fallouts and health threats. It is thus crucial, to mitigate such hazards, to monitor volcanic clouds dispersion and altitude. In this study, we use the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) technique to assess the volcanic cloud altitude resulting from the 2015 Calbuco's eruption. We find volcanic cloud altitude estimations based on RO data in good agreement with the collocated Cloud-Aerosol LIdar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI). The preliminary results of this study confirm that automatized RO profiles processing has great potential in the field of volcanic clouds monitoring.