MONITORING VOLCANIC ASH WITH MSG SEVIRI IMAGE AND RGB APPLICATION

摘要

The eruption from the Eyjafjallaj?kull Volcano, Iceland recently became a high importance for the Meteorological Institutes, Aviation, Satellite Centers and other related institutions. Urgent forecasts were requested by the air control centers, aviation industry and even the passengers who stuck at the airports. It was announced that thousands of flights are canceled; hundreds of thousands of passengers affected and the airlines lost around 1.7 billion dollars in April-May 2010. This is the worst aviation crises. MSG (METEOSAT Second Generation) SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imagery) with its 11 narrow and 1 broad band channels have been providing a worth of data sources for nowcasting and very short forecasting. SEVIRI images and RGB applications have been acted an important role to monitor Volcanic Ash during above aviation crises. SEVIRI has an infrared channel (centered @8.7 micron) which is sensitive sand, dust and ash in the atmosphere. In this study we present Ash RGB applications derived from SEVIRI data to monitor and track Ash clouds over Europe. Two main eruptions during 14-20 April and 7-17 May 2010 will be demonstrated. In addition to this, we will propose an Ash product algorithm and discuss its weakness and strength.