In April 2016, a VAMOS volcano team (Nicole Bobrowski, Julian Rüdiger, Alexandra Gutmann, and Thorsten Hoffmann) again traveled to Sicily—this time instead of visiting Etna, Stromboli was our goal with its easier meteorological conditions during this time of the year. A new UAV based instrument (able to measure various halogen species) had to be tested before one of our VAMOS members (Julian Rüdiger) will leave for a three months stay in Central America.
We were equipped with a drone, which is able to carry a payload of >1 kg and permitting the use of a MultiGAS sensor (Build by Lukas Tirpitz, University of Heidelberg) and a Denuder sampling instrument for the specification of reactive halogens (built by Julian Rüdiger). In addition to the drone based instrument, we also carried alkaline traps, a ground-based denuder sampling system, and a MAXDOAS.
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As mentioned in the last report from Mt Etna: “One of the special things about unmanned aerial devices (UAVs) is that they can go places where humans normally cannot without excessive equipment and uncessary risk” |
We had stable (east) or south-easterly winds, which made ground based in-situ sampling applications impossible. So, the only way to catch the plume was to fly into it.
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We were stationed close to the port of Stromboli and were climbing up every day at the Pizzo. Our first test flights were made under no wind at all conditions.
Unfortunately this didn’t last during the next days. Luckily, Stromboli showed relatively low explosive activity and therefore most of the time our copter was flying safely.
One of the upcoming problems we found was the loss of the signal when the copter was flying right above the crater. Due to a security mode (in the firmware?),
the copter was just returning to its starting position, making it challenging to undertake high concentrated gas measurements.
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| Example of a Flight route at Mt. Stromboli in April 2016 | |
The last day of the campaign was spent at Vulcano Island where we finally did some ground-based in-situ measurements tests.
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Raschig Tube and Denuder inside the fumarolic plume |
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