Manam drone data furthers understanding of volcanoes

The research at Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea will also give scientists an improved understanding of how volcanoes contribute to the global carbon cycle.

Drone versus the volcano: UK team feels the heat

The international team’s findings, published in Science Advances, show for the first time how it is possible to combine measurements from the air, earth and space to learn more about the most inaccessible, highly active volcanoes on the planet.

Researchers from Manchester University joined a large international team for fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, and afterwards made satellite-based measurements of sulphur dioxide gas emissions using the European Space Agency (ESA) instrument TROPOMI.

The ABOVE project involved specialists from the UK, USA, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Costa Rica, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, spanning volcanology and aerospace engineering.

They co-created solutions to the challenges of measuring gas emissions from active volcanoes, through using modified long-range drones.

In a statement, Dr Brendan McCormick Kilbride, Presidential Fellow at Manchester University said: “The really exciting advance here is that we can use drones to achieve measurements of gas emissions that are otherwise impossible. In settings like Papua New Guinea, where highly active volcanoes can be extremely isolated, adopting this technology has immense potential for volcano monitoring at relatively low cost.”