19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

ESA Support to Aviation Control Service

Claus ZehnerESA

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

Overview

• ESA Activities on Volcanic Ash Monitoring from Space

• SACS Project in Detail

Flight tracks Jebel-al-Tairvolcanic cloud

Volcanic ashHigh silicate content Particle size (radius) ranges from 0.01–500 μm (typically) Irregular shape Melting point ~1100 ºC (800–1200 ºC).

Economics - EyaThe total impact on global GDP caused by the first week’s disruption amounts to approximately US$4.7 billion.

http://earth.eo.esa.int/workshops/Volcano/files/STM_280_web.pdf

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

Ongoing ESA PROJECTS

VAST - http://vast.nilu.no/ lead by NILU (F. Prata)

SACS2 - http://sacs.aeronomie.be/ lead by BIRA/IASB (N. Theys)

SMASH - http://www.cgspace.it/download/SMASH_WEB_PAGE.pdf lead by CGS (L. Tampellini)

• Enhance the usage of EO satellite data for volcanic ash monitoring• Update existing user requirements• Provision of improved satellite based volcanic emission information based on e.g.

SEVIRI, AATSR, MODIS, GOME2, IASI, OMI, AIRS measurements• Provision of improved eruption source information• Establishment of an operational LIDAR network in Ireland (national co-funding)• Establishment of a database for historic eruptions (satellite, ground-based, airborne,

modeling data)• Development of an operational demonstration volcanic ash forecasting service (open source code operated at ZAMG) that could be implemented at VAACs or

elsewhere• Define a ‘best’ future end-to-end volcanic ash monitoring system

Support to Aviation Control Service (SACS)

The objective of SACS is to deliver in near-real time data from space-based instruments regarding SO2 and aerosol (ash) data possibly related to volcanic activity. In case of an event notifications are send by email to users, pointing them to a dedicated web page with detailed information.

Number of subscribed users : 178

• Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres (all!)

• Observatories

• Research institutions, Universities, scientists

• Flight captains

• Commercial Companies (e.g., Aerlingus)

• VAST

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 1, 5935-6000, 2013, www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/1/5935/2013/, doi:10.5194/nhessd-1-5935-2013This discussion paper is under review for the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Science (NHESS).

H. Brenot et al.: Support to Aviation Control Service (SACS): an online service for near real-time satellite monitoring of volcanic plumes

Support to Aviation Control Service

Data Products of SACS

Instruments Data type

Dataavailability

Overpass time

Resol.(km²)

Participants Data products

SCIAMACHY (ENVISAT)

UV/visible 2004/042012/04

10:00 30x60 BIRAKNMI

SO2 vertical columns * absorbing aerosol index *

GOME-2(MetOp-A)

UV/visible 2007/01present

09:30 40x80 DLRBIRAKNMI

SO2 vertical columnsSO2 plume height (off-line) absorbing aerosol index

OMI(Aura)

UV/visible 2004/09present

13:30 13x24 KNMI SO2 vertical columns * * absorbing aerosol index

IASI(MetOp-A)

Infrared 2007/10present

09:30 21:30

12x12 ULB SO2 index and columnsash indicator

AIRS(Aqua)

Infrared 2002/09present

01:3013:30

15x15 JPLNILUULB

SO2 indexSO2 columnsash indicator

Near‐real time and archive service(delay: 1‐4 hours)

*  Archive data (contact with ENVISAT lost since April 2012)

* * OMI SO2 columns in Very Fast Delivery mode (VFD) over Europe (delay: 15‐45 ’). Courtesy of FMI/KNMI.

Support to Aviation Control Service

Main Service Features:

• One e-mail is sent per 12 hours and per 30°x 30° predefined region (first instrument to detect SO2).

• System optimized to avoid false notifications (e.g., anthropogenic SO2) –success rate: >95%

• After a notification, all other notifications (confirmation during the next 12h) are available through the webpage

Bezymianny eruption

Support to Aviation Control Service

http://sacs.aeronomie.be

sounder

period

region

SO2 columns and aerosol index products in near‐real time (delay: 1‐4 hours)

data

http://sacs.aeronomie.be

Web Portal

Recent Improvements of SACS

‐ NRT monitoring  with new products of AIRS and IASI (SO2 and ash)

‐ AIRS (NILU product) has been added to the SACS SO2 notification system

Eruption of Copahue(Chile – Argentina)

December 2012

‐ Update of archive (SO2 and ash plots) for AIRS and IASI

Recent Improvements of SACS

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

User Requirements• http://vast.nilu.no/media/documents/2013/

09/03/nilu-esa-vast-urd-v0.4.pdf

• SACS: Active User service to enable service improvement based on user feedback

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

Product Generation and Distribution • SACS: notifications are being distributed

to subscribed users via e-mail

• SACS: NRT data provision via WebPage

• SACS: Data Archive via WebPage

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

Scope for Harmonization with other Providers

• Harmonization: yes if requested by the end-users

• SACS satellite data format: ASCII and HDF-4 format (sacs.aeronomie.be/info/dataspec.php –together with routines to read and plot the data)

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

Interaction SACS/VAST

• The ESA VAST project is a user of the SACS notification service

• VAST operational (at ZAMG) demonstration service on volcanic ash forecasting starting during next year (1 year duration – using satellite data to constrain the forecasting)

• VAST has it’s own satellite NRT service based on SEVIRI data (http://fred.nilu.no/sat)

19-22 Nov 2013 SCOPE-Nowcasting-1Agenda Item 5 – Pilot Projects

Institutional Commitments for sustained Product Generation

• There is no Commitment from ESA for sustained Product Generation

• There is close Cooperation with Eumetsat (e.g. new SEVIRI algorithms having been successfully tested within VAST are planned to be implemented into the operational processing chain at Eumetsat in the future)

• The VAST modelling algorithms are all open source code and will be made available to the public after the end of the demonstration service