Saturday, February 15, 2014

Visualizing the Kelut Volcano eruption cloud in Google Earth, Feb 13 2014

Kelut volcano erupted on February 13, 2014. A NASA MODIS image captured the cloud at 18:10 UTC. See Thermal infrared imagery of the cloud. This is at 11 microns wavelength. Black colors are cold, white are warmer. White coastline added to the image.


MODIS Thermal infrared image of the ash cloud.

This data can then be converted to cloud top heights, given that the cloud reached above the tropopause height, 16.5 km from local radiosonde. I was then able to take these cloud top heights and visualize them within Google Earth


Top view of the Kelut cloud from 18:10 on Feb 13, 2014.


Zoomed in view of the cloud top.


Side view of the cloud top locations, note the higher altitude portion and that one can select the actual location of each point and find out the altitude in km and feet.



2 comments:

  1. woaw! Great! Perfect to give the real dimensions of this plume! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great work Peter.
    How you made it ?

    ReplyDelete

Panorama of Lower East Rift Zone Camera from Lower East Rift Zone [PGcam], May 7 - June 5, 2018

See the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory for Real-Time updates:  https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/ June 5, 2018 at 15...