Eruption of the Lewotolok volcano in Indonesia

By Scott Bachmeier • 29 November 2020

Himawari-8 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

JMA Himawari-8 True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed the volcanic clouds produced by an eruption of Lewotolok in Indonesia on 29 November 2020 — with one cloud plume moving to the northwest, and another moving more rapidly southeastward. This difference in volcanic cloud propagation was due to directional wind shear, as revealed by rawinsonde data from Kupang on the island of Timor (below), located about 250 km southeast of Lewotolok. A shift to northwesterly winds occurred at an altitude around 9 km (the 322 hPa pressure level).

Plot of rawinsonde data from Kupang, Indonesia [click to enlarge]

Himawari-8 Ash RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

Himawari-8 Ash RGB images (above) displayed an ash signature for both volcanic plumes, which became more diffuse after about 5 hours. Himawari-8 retrievals of Ash Height from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (below) showed maximum values in the 16-18 km range for the southeast-moving cloud (the advisory issued by the Darwin VAAC listed maximum height values of 50,000 feet or 15 km).

Himawari-8 Ash Height [click to play animation | MP4]

Himawari-8 False Color images (below) indicated the presence of both SO2 (shades of yellow to green) and ash in the southeastward-moving volcanic cloud.

Himawari-8 False Color images [click to play animation | MP4]

Explosive #eruption of #Lewotolo (#Lewotolok) #volcano, E. #Indonesia, at 01:50 UTC on Nov 29. Rapidly identified by the @NOAA/@UWCIMSS VOLCAT system due to strong thermal signal and vertical Cloud Growth Anomaly (#VolcanoCb) in #Himawari imagery. Max ash cloud height >12 km. pic.twitter.com/qoPcTlFJpz

— Simon Carn (@simoncarn) November 29, 2020

Categories: Himawari-8, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Volcanic activity

CIMSS Satellite Blog

CIMSS Satellite Blog

Eruption of the Lewotolok volcano in Indonesia