An unloading foam model to constrain Etna’s 11–13 January 2011 lava fountaining episode

Abstract

The 11–13 January 2011 eruptive episode at Etna volcano occurred after several months of increasing ash emissions from the summit craters, and was heralded by increasing SO2 output, which peaked at ∼5000 megagrams/day several hours before the start of the eruptive activity. The eruptive episode began with a phase of Strombolian activity from a pit crater on the eastern flank of the SE‐Crater. Explosions became more intense with time and eventually became transitional between Strombolian and fountaining, before moving into a lava fountaining phase. Fountaining was accompanied by lava output from the lower rim of the pit crater. Emplacement of the resulting lava flow field, as well as associated lava fountain‐ and Strombolian‐phases, was tracked using a remote sensing network comprising both thermal and visible cameras. Thermal surveys completed once the eruptive episode had ended also allowed us to reconstruct the emplacement of the lava flow field. Using a high temporal resolution geostationary satellite data we were also able to construct a detailed record of the heat flux during the fountain‐fed flow phase and its subsequent cooling. The dense rock volume of erupted lava obtained from the satellite data was 1.2 × 106 m3; this was emplaced over a period of about 6 h to give a mean output rate of ∼55 m3 s−1. By comparison, geologic data allowed us to estimate dense rock volumes of ∼0.85 × 106 m3 for the pyroclastics erupted during the lava fountain phase, and 0.84–1.7 × 106 m3 for lavas erupted during the effusive phase, resulting in a total erupted dense rock volume of 1.7–2.5 × 106 m3 and a mean output rate of 78–117 m3 s−1. The sequence of events and quantitative results presented here shed light on the shallow feeding system of the volcano.