 Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us here in research in Manila. Every Monday at one, this show appears. Usually Jay Fidel is the host. I'm Ethan Allen. I'm filling in for Jay as he is away right now. And helping us out here in the studio today is Andrea Gabrieli. Welcome, Andrea. Nice to see you, Ethan. Thank you. Yes, indeed. Great to be back. Andrea has been here before. He is a research assistant and PhD candidate at that HIGP, the Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology, if I got that correctly. That's right. Absolutely. And that's part of SOES, part of UH. So it's all the different layers there. Just the layers in a volcano, right? Yeah. We're gonna talk about a bunch of things about volcanoes, but take about the gases that come out of volcanoes today and about some of the technologies that he's working on to sense these gases. So maybe start out just I assume most of our audience here is from Hawaii and if from most people probably do know what Vogue is, but let's start with basics. What is Vogue? Vogue, as they call it here in Hawaii, is basically a volcanic smog. So it's formed when the SO2 gas, the SO2, the sulfur dioxide is released by volcanoes and then it interacts with the atmosphere and particularly with particles within the atmosphere, rain, sunlight. And so we have this mixture of aerosols, of acidic aerosols and sulfuric acids that are carried away by the wind and so they can affect the people living downwind of the active volcanoes and also they can affect animals, they can affect plants and also infrastructures because they are acidic. They can deteriorate and impact those infrastructures, buildings and yeah. Right, and if there's small bodies of water downwind from them again that can make the water more acidic, which can have impacts on life forms in the water. Absolutely, yeah. So it's, and we know. Rain as well, if it rains and then the the the aerosols, the acidic aerosols can precipitate because of the rain, because of the water, so they can affect all this. You're getting dilutes of acid in your rain, which is not what you want. We don't want to drink that. Right, and we know well in Hawaii because depending on how the wind goes, sometimes we get a good deal of alive over here in Oahu, usually not too much, but we all do know it. And we get to that. In fact, I brought one, maybe if we can have the first slide. Yeah, so we can. Okay, here for example, you can see exactly what we're talking about. These are the Hawaiian islands, you can see them. And this was taken by a NASA satellite, which is modus. This is a visible image. And you can see the, it was taken during a standard train width day. So you can see the clouds forming on the windward side of the islands. And then you can also see within the red line that I drew, you can see this haze, this hazy gas that swirled to the left of the big island. And that's basically the Vox. So you can see, you can see from space, you can see it from space. And you can see how large this bloom is. And so that's why when, for example, low pressure system comes closer to the islands, then we can have Kono winds, southerly winds that bring up all these gases, all these haze towards the, all the islands. And even Oahu sometimes can be affected. You can, sometimes from, for example, from my, from my window, I can't even see the why and I amount is in the distance because of the haze and all that. So people, people start complaining about it here very quickly. It's a trouble breathing and get attacks and all. Now the thing that you're in particularly interested in is not just the Vogue itself, but it's the gases within it. Because these gases can tell us a good deal about the Vogue and they can help us understand what's sort of going on under the ground in the volcano, right? They can help because their composition will change depending upon how the magma liquid rock in the, underneath the volcano is sort of turning over and churning and bubbling away, right? Absolutely. In fact, the, these studies that we are actually carrying out at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology are important for two main reasons. The first one is the one you just mentioned, that studying these gases can tell us a lot about what's going on within the plumbing systems of volcanoes. So whether magma is rising, whether eruptions are imminent. But also, as we mentioned at the beginning, it's important to start to actually monitor the fluxes from these volcanoes. So the amount of gas which is released within a certain amount of time to, to survey and try and predict the quality of the air for people who live downwind active volcanoes. So we asked Maddox can take proper precautions and either stay indoors or put on appropriate masks or whatever they need to be done. For example, the one main concern for people living on the Kona, on the west side of the Bay Island, so in Kailua Kona, is basically that that area is is in a trade winds shadow because the huge mountains of Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, block the trade winds. So that area is subjected to daily wind pattern, which is different from those that we can see in other locations. And so what happens is that as the land that gets hotter and hotter during the day, the ocean stays at the same temperature. And so a wind, because of this temperature difference, winds starts to blow from the ocean up to the land. And so, so clouds start to form there. So as the as the wind blows up this air towards the Kuala Lai mountains, Mauna Loa slopes, then also fog gets accumulated there. So that's serious concern, especially in the afternoon for these areas and locations. And there are days where the fog is is actually thicker. Sometimes it's difficult. It's like a fog. It's like it's like a fog. And except again, it's a more of a irritating fog. And if, for instance, you're trying to grow young plants, young plants will be particularly susceptible to the acidic nature of that. Yeah, it's sulfuric acid. And so that's why it's a and there are lots of studies going on whether this fog is what are the long term effects on the people living there. So there are lots of studies going on about this. But we want to, in order to try and predict where the fog is going to go so that people can get alerts and everything, we want to measure these gases as they are released from the source. And so this is this is exactly what we're doing with. And so I we have another picture here, I think that I can bring that the second picture, sort of a close up here, here, we're looking at the source. We're looking at the source of one of the one of the two sources of the fog at the current eruption of killer way of volcano. So this is a picture we we took during an overflight from a helicopter, you can see part of the helicopter on the right of the image. And this is pooh or event. This is the active event on killer way of it began eruption on January the third 1983. That's the current ongoing eruption, the pooh occupy Naha. And since the beginning, it has been continuously releasing lots amount of gases, including water vapor, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide as well, being a source of fog and concern for people. But between 2002 and 2007, the amount of gases which were released by the volcano where in metric tons per day, they were about according to USGS estimates, 140 tons, metric tons per day. So that's quite a bit of sulfur dioxide, which then can interacts with the atmosphere and forms the fog. But since the new event, the new event within at the summit in 2008, a new event opened up in within the Halema event. Since then, the amount of fog is severely increased, because now, now we're seeing, now we're seeing the fluxes of 800 metric tons per day. So severely increased and since 2000, since 2008, we actually saw this, this increased in emissions because now, now what we're having there are two vents. So one is degassing along the east reef zone. And the other one is degassing at the summit. That's quite a bit of fog, especially for areas immediately downwing these vents like Pahoa, for example. Or again, as we said, if the winds are coming from the south, even even Helo, Helo is actually closer than Kona. But if the winds are blowing from the south and Helo can be completely core in fog. And because these vents are in two different places, they're actually being fed from slightly different chambers of magma. And the gases vary a little bit between them. The gases vary a little bit between them. These are, this is what volcanologists call a two stages degassing. Because basically, gases are being released at the summit where there is the central magma chamber. There is a reservoir that started to form after the new vent opened up. That's, they call it the South Halema or Recevoir. And then there is a path that goes along. That's the that's an area of weakness within the volcano that they call it the east reef zone. And from the summit magma can travel within these cracks and gets to pull off. So that the gassing is is slightly different in composition. They call it two stages degassing. But the fact that now there are two vents, the gases is has dramatically increased the the the problem of the fog is here in Hawaii and and and and also the the the especially especially as I said in Kona and other areas which are threatened by that. Well, excellent. And we're going to explore this whole phenomenon a lot further and get get deeper into the area of the sensors that you use after a short break here. But right now we're going to take a little break. We'll be back with research in Manawa on your standing host Ethan Allen. We'll bring it back. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. Thanks for watching Think Tech this summer. We have a lot of terrific shows of great importance. And I hope you'll watch my show too every Tuesday at noon. As we address sustainability issues for Hawaii, they're really pertinent as the World Conservation Congress approaches in September, and the World Youth Congress that's focusing on sustainability next year as well. Have a great summer and tune in at noon every Tuesday. I'm standing in your man and I want you to be here every Friday. Noonthinktechhawaii.com. Watch the show. Be there. I'm hitting the full weight. I'm Jay Fidel, and I'm the host of Research in Manoa Mondays from 12 to 1 on thinktechhawaii.com. Take a look at us and learn about geophysics, learn about planetology, learn about the ocean and earth sciences at UH Manoa. You'll really enjoy it. So come around. We'll see you then. And your back. Thanks for joining us again. Research in Manoa Monday afternoons at one each week. I'm Ethan Allen, filling in for Jay Fidel. And with me today is Andrea Gabrieli from HIGP, what does call it, the Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology. And we've been talking about Vogue and the gases in Vogue and the ups and downs of Vogue. But really, your work is on sensing these gases and determining how much gas is being released how fast because obviously if you're going to start predicting the impact, the impacts of the Vogue, you need to know how much toxic gas is being released. So then the third slide that we have here shows one of your instruments set up, I guess was on site sensing this testing this gas. Can you begin to tell us a little bit about the instrument? Sure. This is an instrument. We it's a it's a spectrometer. It's an imaging spectrometer. Now let's just stop here. It's actually it's a thermo infrared hyperspectral imaging spectrometer. That's a complicated name. Well, that's that's one of the things on likable science I host. I try to get people to break down their science into simpler terms. So tell me a little bit in simple terms, what is a spectrometer then? So there we brought this instrument over to the volcano to actually test it and see how well we can we can detect these gases retrieve this concentration to try and and and see in terms of fluxes information and and how well we can retrieve them. And so here we are looking at our instrument. We brought it there. This was this picture was taken in July. So what we're doing is we're basically measuring infrared light. So we are in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum coming. Yeah, it's a it's a thermal radiation basically that we're measuring from the background. This is this is the radiation comes through the from the sun from the atmosphere from the top of the atmosphere and and it comes and it gets to the plume. And then here because within the plume there are molecules which are infrared active. So these are specific molecules and so to the sulfur dioxide which can emit and absorb infrared light at specific frequencies. So what we're doing is we're measuring the light coming from the background coming from beneath the plume coming from the background and from the plume itself because the plume has also a temperature. So he's emitting photons. Right. So we're measuring this budget of infrared lights. This is called the spectrum particularly. We're looking we're looking between eight and fourteen microns. So this is what they call the thermal infrared. And what we're doing is that we're trying to identify the SO2 signatures. The SO2 features that we can see in this spectrum. So for example it's like if you if you think about fingerprints in terms of fingerprints we're trying to detect the fingerprints of the SO2 gas. Right. So SO2 the sulfur dioxide will when it's when it's excited and stimulated by some infrared light will actually then remit infrared with sort of different little peaks. Some peaks at say nine hundred and other little peak at eleven hundred or something like that. It emits infrared light because the SO2 has a temperature at the specific wavelength. Right. But it also absorbs part of the light which comes from the background. Right. So we are what we're measuring is basically a combination between emission and transmission. And we're measuring these the these terms coming from the SO2. And by looking at these variations and we're basically we're basically detecting the SO2 gas. And so now this is showing how you're sort of calibrating this whole thing. Right. This is this is so when we actually so the main point that here you can see our instrument on the left and then you can see it has a gas cell. The cylinder the gray cylinder with a yellow aperture with a yellow that's a window. It's basically a gas chamber. That's a gas chamber where we put the SO2 gas in and the main point is these cameras can extremely well detect these radiances these variations in these fingerprints we were talking about of SO2 but the main problem is how we can go from radiances on to concentration to they call it the concentration along the viewing path through the path concentration. And so this is a series of experiments we've been doing. The S we put SO2 gas within the chamber. Right. And then we know the amount of gas which we put in there. And also the material is a specific kind of plastic which we chose. We built these gas cells actually and we chose this material because it doesn't react with the SO2 so we want to make sure the SO2 which we put in there stays in there. And so we know the SO2 of the gas so we can basically test how well we can retrieve a known concentration of SO2. Once we know the instrument that works well performs well under various conditions then we can apply it to kill away and then actually measure these gases. Right. And then in the field and I think the next set of pictures which shows this because you get these very different conditions these different backgrounds which have different infrared signatures. But because you now have calibrated your machine so carefully you can actually pick out the SO2 and see if it's maybe very consistent between those selectors although you couldn't tell it just looking at it. So the main point concern we find in the field situation is that the budgets of infrared light we were mentioning before changes. Right. So basically here for example we can see two pictures I took exactly on the same day of the gas bloom at Kilauea volcano being released by Halemao Mao. So on the left that's a picture we took in the morning. On the right you can see a picture we took in the afternoon. The background changed because there we have clear sky and on the right we have clouds. Right. Now the problem is that because we're measuring these combination of emission and transmission we don't want the background to interfere with what we're doing. So basically in other words we don't want to measure to retrieve a concentration of SO2 in the morning and then in the afternoon because the background changed we don't want to measure another concentration. So we want to sort of remove the background effects because we don't want to be we want to obtain the concentration in the plume the actual concentration in the plume without being related to the background. In other words we want to we want to make sure we're actually measuring the volcanic SO2 and not an effect which is related to the changing background. Right. So assuming of course assuming the SO2 is constant between the morning and the afternoon pictures we should be able to retrieve the same concentration. So this is why we're studying different backgrounds, different conditions, different atmospheric conditions. So whether it's raining, whether it's hazy, whether there are cirrus clouds, cumulus clouds and everything. You even do some I think if we jump maybe another picture to a head you've done some of this at night actually even. We tried but before that here is another picture as I mentioned we want to make sure we can retrieve the correct concentration of gases within the plume no matter the background. So here for example we the other set of experiments we carried them out in the lab but here you can see we are on the roof of the one of our buildings at University of Hawaii on campus and I put the gas cell again in front of the instrument and we're scanning across the sky. As you can see now the sky we have some nice high altitude clouds these are cirrus clouds and we know again the concentration of gas which I put in the gas because I put it in there. So I want to make sure that we can get it back we can retrieve the same concentrations using various techniques. Right you can pull that background off of it now basically and get an authentic reading. Yeah Excellent excellent and how about the nighttime shots here because I gather that's... This is oh yeah this is an interesting story because the good thing about these instruments these using infrared imaging spectrometers is that these instruments work at night. Right because heat is traveling through... Because in the infrared in the infrared parts of the spectrum that we can see. For example there are other techniques such as UV, ultraviolet based devices and those basically don't work at night. So it's extremely important for example if you want to make sure that what's happening to the plume at night or if you think the broad pictures for example if you want to predict different volcanoes here we're looking at strongly in Italy for example if you want to look at other volcanoes then volcanoes for example that are in places where near the poles for example where during the arctic winters or the Antarctic winters where it's always night then you can't measure those gases because you don't have instruments. Right. For example if we bring up another slide I think it was there was another one or yeah this one. This is a picture I took flying over Iceland so I was on an aircraft and you can see that's the that volcano is called Eia Fiatla Jocotla now some some some friends of mine from Iceland might say oh you're pronouncing it wrong you know but this is Icelandic names are particularly tricky to hopefully I said it right but it's an Iceland so it's called an Iceland and the that volcano is started to erupt dramatically in 2010 and the ash cloud it produced the threat and disrupted the whole air circle air trips over Europe but so detecting gases in these locations during winter time where when it's always dark it's particularly important so that's where these instruments can actually make a difference. Exactly well this is great I mean this is you've given a great overview of why the why the work you're doing is so important because it has all these different implications and applications for people nearby for people far away for people in commercial air travel for people in high latitudes and different times of the day so wonderful and and and furthermore I congratulate you really did explain that the thermal infrared hyperspectral imaging spectrometer very well and I have much better sense now for that device does and works so I want to thank you so much for being here on research in Manawa it was a real pleasure talking with you and uh very educational as thank you very much thank you very much thank you thank you thank you take care Aloha