The WWLLN Ash Cloud Monitor is an experimental research project, supported in part by a USGS grant to the University of Washington. The project is divided into two parts: AVO ( Alaskan Volcano Observatory) volcanos and all global volcanos . The AVO volcanos are singled out because these volcanos are located outside of the earth tropical resions, where natural lightning is common. The challenge of this research is to reliably identify ash cloud lightning, caused by an active volcanic eruption, from natural lightning occurring near the volcano. We are providing the Volcanic ash cloud monitor data and kml overlays for all global volcanos, updated every minute, but we are only sending alerts for the AVO volcanos at this time.

The public is invited to examine these webpages for the AVO volcanos and for the Global volcanos. Each table lists all the volcanos in each monitored set, including 1563 monitored volcanos in the Global set, and 262 monitored volcanos in the AVO set. Every minute we examine all global volcanos for proximity to lightning detected by WWLLN. These tables record the total strokes in the central area within 20 km of the volcano caldera, and also in an outer ring out to 100 km from the caldera. Representatives of organizations and research institutes are invited to express their interest in getting onto the email alert list. Please contact Prof. Holzworth if you are interested. At present only AVO volcano alerts are being generated.

Again, click on AVO for the Alaskan Volcano Obserrvatory list
and click on Global for the full global list.

Please feel free to send your comments about these webpages to Prof. Holzworth .


We had our first successful early alert for VOLCANO Ash Cloud Lightning with the successful identification of the Explosive Ash Cloud for Sheveluch, Kamchatka (click here for details). The WWLLN monitor alert message was first received at 17:06 UTC 2010-10-27 over 1 hour prior to any other detection confirmation of the eruption. 

FIRST ALERT EMAIL MESSAGE:

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:06:05 +0000
From: sferix@flash4.ess.washington.edu
To: jbrundell@gmail.com, bobholz@uw.edu, jwewert@usgs.gov
Subject: WWLLN Volcano Alert: Shiveluch
Parts/Attachments:
   1 Shown     8 lines  Text
   2         ~17 KB     Application
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Name: Shiveluch, Kamchatka
Location: 56.6530°N, 161.3600°E
Type: Stratovolcano

Start: 2010-10-27 16:05:00 UTC
Stop: 2010-10-27 17:05:00 UTC
Inner stroke count: 1     <--  first ash cloud lightning stroke was recorded at 2010/10/27 17:04:34.447226 UTC
Outer stroke count: 0

Please see invited talk at the AGU (American Geophysical Union meeting) on Dec 15, 2010
AE31A-04. Global detection of explosive volcanic eruptions with the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) and application to aviation safety (Invited). J. W. Ewert; R. H. Holzworth; A. K. Diefenbach (see AGU Abstract). Wed, Dec 15 8:45 AM