Alparone, Salvatore

On 21 May 2023, a hidden eruption occurred at the Southeast Crater (SEC) of Etna (Italy); indeed, bad weather prevented its direct and remote observation. Tephra fell toward the southwest, and two lava flows propagated along the SEC’s southern and eastern flanks. The monitoring system of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia testified to its occurrence. We analyzed the seismic and infrasound signals to constrain the temporal evolution of the fountain, which lasted about 5 h. We finally reached Etna’s summit two weeks later and found an unexpected pyroclastic density current (PDC) deposit covering the southern lava flow at its middle portion. We performed unoccupied aerial system and field surveys to reconstruct in 3D the SEC, lava flows, and PDC deposits and to collect some samples. The data allowed for detailed mapping, quantification, and characterization of the products. The resulting lava flows and PDC deposit volumes were (1.54 ± 0.47) × 106 m3 and (1.30 ± 0.26) × 105 m3, respectively. We also analyzed ground-radar and satellite data to evaluate that the plume height ranges between 10 and 15 km. This work is a comprehensive analysis of the fieldwork, UAS, volcanic tremor, infrasound, radar, and satellite data. Our results increase awareness of the volcanic activity and potential dangers for visitors to Etna’s summit area.

Nel 2018 è stato avviato il progetto FOCUS - Fiber Optic Cable Use For Seafloor Studies Of Earthquake - coordinato da Marc-André Gutscher del Laboratoire Géosciences Océan dell’Università di Brest, in Francia. Questo progetto indaga la sismicità e la struttura crostale del Mar Ionio attraverso l’analisi e l’interpretazione di dati raccolti da strumentazione sottomarina e da reti di monitoraggio disponibili o appositamente installate nelle zone di costa. In tale contesto, l’Osservatorio Nazionale Terremoti (ONT) e l’Osservatorio Etneo (OE), entrambe Sezioni dell’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), e il Laboratorio di Sismologia dell'Università della Calabria (UniCal), hanno contribuito al progetto con l’installazione di una rete sismica temporanea lungo la costa ionica calabro-siciliana a integrazione della rete permanente presente nell’area dello Stretto di Messina. La rete temporanea, costituita da 13 stazioni, ha acquisito dal mese di dicembre 2021 al mese di giugno 2023. Nel gennaio 2022, i partner internazionali del progetto FOCUS hanno installato una rete temporanea di sismometri OBS e sensori di pressione per fondali marini. La grande quantità di dati raccolta e la loro integrazione, consentirà di migliorare il monitoraggio sismico e le conoscenze relative alla struttura terrestre dell’area con particolare attenzione alle strutture sismogenetiche con un dettaglio mai raggiunto fino a ora. Tutte le istituzioni coinvolte in FOCUS collaborano per l’acquisizione e l’elaborazione dei dati, l’imaging dell’interno della Terra attraverso l’utilizzo di tecniche avanzate, l’interpretazione e la modellazione dei dati. Il presente lavoro descrive la progettazione, la realizzazione e la gestione della rete temporanea a terra definita FXland, fornendo indicazioni relative sul suo generale funzionamento e sulle caratteristiche del dataset acquisito.

In this work, we study a Mediterranean cyclone, Helios, which took place during 9–11 February 2023 in the southeastern part of Sicily and Malta, by a multiparametric approach combining microseism results with sea state and meteorological data provided by wavemeter buoy, HF radar, hindcast maps and satellite SEVIRI images. The sub-tropical system Helios caused heavy rainfall, strong wind gusts and violent storm surges with significant wave heights greater than 5 m. We deal with the relationships between such a system and the features of microseism (the most continuous and ubiquitous seismic signal on Earth) in terms of spectral content, space–time variation of the amplitude and source locations tracked by means of two methods (amplitude-based grid search and array techniques). By comparing the location of the microseism sources and the area affected by significant storm surges derived from sea state data, we note that the microseism location results are in agreement with the real position of the storm surges. In addition, we are able to obtain the seismic signature of Helios using a method that exploits the coherence of continuous seismic noise. Hence, we show how an innovative monitoring system of the Mediterranean cyclones can be designed by integrating microseism information with other techniques routinely used to study meteorological phenomena.

The INGV is the operational center for earthquake monitoring in Italy, https://www.ingv.it/en/monitoraggio-e-infrastrutture/sorveglianza/servizio-di-sorveglianza-sismica, it operates the Italian National Seismic Network and other networks at different scales and is a primary node of EIDA for archiving and distributing seismic recordings. INGV provides earthquake information to the Department of Civil Protection and to the public. In the frame of the FOCUS (Fiber Optic Cable Use for seafloor studies of earthquake hazard and deformation) project, https://www.geo-ocean.fr/Recherche/Projets-de-Recherche/ERC-FOCUS, we deployed a temporary seismic network, FXLand (1J), for a passive seismological experiment to record regional seismicity and teleseismic events. This experiment aims to improve the detection of seismicity; the accuracy of earthquake locations, and to define the crustal structure of the region. The seismicity in the Ionian area is possibly the result of two types of tectonic activity at different depths: a gently NW dipping subduction interface of the Calabrian subduction zone, and the strike-slip fault systems in the Ionian Sea, well expressed in the morpho-bathymetry and observed in previous seismic profiles.

The persistent open-vent degassing of Mt. Etna is often punctuated by monthslong paroxysmal sequences characterized by episodes of violent Strombolian to lava fountaining activity. Understanding these gas-fueled transitions from quiescence to eruption requires routine measurement of gas fluxes. Here, we report SO2 flux measurements, obtained from a permanent UV camera system, collected over a two-year-long period spanning two paroxysmal sequences of Etna’s New South East Crater (NSEC) in December 2020/April 2021 and May/ October 2021. In both cases, SO2 flux increased from ≤ 3250 Mg/day during “ordinary” activity to ≥ 4200 Mg/day. We interpret these distinct SO2 degassing regimes in light of seismic and thermal observations and drawing on numerical simulations of sulfur degassing constrained by parental melt sulfur contents in Etna’s hawaiites. We find that initiation of a paroxysmal sequence results from an approximate doubling of the time-averaged rate of magma supply (and degassing) above the sulfur exsolution level (~150 MPa pressure), to >4m3/s. This corroborates recent models that argue for the triggering of paroxysmal sequences by escalating supply of volatile-rich magma to a reservoir ~3–4 km below the summit region. The non-stationary nature of magma flow and volcanic degassing we identify highlights the need for sustained surveillance to characterize long-term atmospheric budgets of volcanic volatiles

Monitoring the state of the sea is a fundamental task for economic activities in the coastal zone, such as transport, tourism and infrastructure design. In recent years, regular wave height monitoring for marine risk assessment and mitigation has become unavoidable as global warming impacts in more intense and frequent swells.In particular, the Mediterranean Sea has been considered as one of the most responsive regions to global warming, which may promote the intensification of hazardous natural phenomena as strong winds, heavy precipitation and high sea waves. Because of the high density population along the Mediterranean coastlines, heavy swells could have major socio-economic consequences. To reduce the impacts of such scenarios, the development of more advanced monitoring systems of the sea state becomes necessary.In the last decade, it has been demonstrated how seismometers can be used to measure sea conditions by exploiting the characteristics of a part of the seismic signal called microseism. Microseism is the continuous seismic signal recorded in the frequency band of 0.05 and 0.4 Hz that is likely generated by interactions of sea waves together and with seafloor or shorelines.In this work, in the framework of i-WaveNET INTERREG project, we performed a regression analysis to develop a model capable of predicting the sea state in the Sicily Channel (Italy) using microseism, acquired by onshore instruments installed in Sicily and Malta. Considering the complexity of the relationship between spatial sea wave height data and seismic data measured at individual stations, we used supervised machine learning (ML) techniques to develop the prediction model. As input data we used the hourly Root Mean Squared (RMS) amplitude of the seismic signal recorded by 14 broadband stations, along the three components, and in different frequency bands, during 2018 - 2021. These stations, belonging to the permanent seismic networks managed by the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology INGV and the Department of Geosciences of the University of Malta, consist of three-component broadband seismometers that record at a sampling frequency of 100 Hz.As for the target, the significant sea wave height data from Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) for the same period were used. Such data is the hindcast product of the Mediterranean Sea Waves forecasting system, with hourly temporal resolution and 1/24° spatial resolution. After a feature selection step, we compared three different kinds of ML algorithms for regression: K-Nearest-Neighbors (KNN), Random Forest (RF) and Light Gradient Boosting (LGB). The hyperparameters were tuned by using a grid-search algorithm, and the best models were selected by cross-validation.  Different metrics, such as MAE, R2 and RMSE, were considered to evaluate the generalization capabilities of the models and special attention was paid to evaluate the predictive ability of the models for extreme wave height values.Results show model predictive capabilities good enough to develop a sea monitoring system to complement the systems currently in use.

In this work, we exploited the ubiquitous seismic noise generated by energy transfer from the sea to the solid Earth (called microseism) to infer the significant wave height data, with the aim of developing a microseismbased monitoring system of the Sicily Channel. We used a combined approach based on statistical analysis and machine learning by using seismic and sea state data (provided by the hindcast maps), recorded between 2018 and 2021.Through spectral and amplitude analysis, we observed that microseism was influenced by the conditions of the seas surrounding Sicily. Correlation analysis demonstrates that microseism mostly originates from sources located up to 400 km from the coastlines. Moreover, employing machine learning algorithms, we successfully reconstruct spatial and temporal sea wave distributions using microseism data. Among the tested methods, the Random Forest algorithm yields the best results, with an R2 value of 0.89 and a mean prediction error of about 0.21 m.

Da venerdì 4 novembre a domenica 6 novembre 2022, si è tenuta una esercitazione nazionale denominata “Exe Sisma dello Stretto 2022” in un'area del territorio della Regione Calabria e della Regione Sicilia caratterizzata da una elevatissima pericolosità sismica. L’esercitazione è stata indetta e coordinata dal Dipartimento della Protezione Civile e aveva l’obiettivo di verificare la risposta operativa a un evento sismico significativo del Servizio Nazionale della Protezione Civile, di cui anche l’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia fa parte. Durante le tre giornate, l’INGV ha avuto modo di testare tutte le procedure che l’Istituto ha codificato a partire da quelle del “Protocollo di Ente per le emergenze sismiche e da maremoto”. Dopo che INGV ha dato l’avvio all’intera esercitazione simulando il terremoto di magnitudo MW 6.2 (ML 6.0) alle ore 09:00 UTC in provincia di Reggio Calabria (5 km a SW dal comune di Laganadi), e ha, quindi, inviato il messaggio per il potenziale maremoto con un livello di allerta arancione; inoltre, il Presidente INGV ha prontamente convocato l’Unità di Crisi e attivato tutti Gruppi Operativi. Questi ultimi, nell’ambito dello scenario esercitativo, hanno verificato che i flussi di comunicazione interna e tutte le attività necessarie in emergenza sismica, presenti nei relativi protocolli operativi, risultassero rispettati. L’obiettivo primario dell’esercitazione è stato quindi quello di validare le attività previste e di aggiornare il personale afferente ai Gruppi Operativi stessi. Tra di essi, SISMIKO, che rappresenta il GO dedicato al coordinamento delle reti sismiche mobili INGV in emergenza, nelle settimane precedenti l’esercitazione ha predisposto tutte le attività che intendeva testare, descrivendole brevemente nel Documento d’impianto INGV e con maggior dettaglio in quello del Gruppo Operativo. A pochi giorni dalla chiusura dell’esercitazione, un terremoto di magnitudo ML 5.7 (MW 5.5) registrato alle ore 06:07 UTC del 09 novembre 2022 ha spostato l’attenzione dalla simulazione alla realtà.

Il 09 novembre 2022 alle ore 06:07 UTC (07:07 ora italiana) un terremoto di magnitudo ML 5.7 (MW 5.5) è stato localizzato dal sistema di sorveglianza sismica dell’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). L'epicentro è stato localizzato nel Mar Adriatico ad una distanza di circa 30 km dalla costa marchigiana in provincia di Pesaro e Urbino, a circa 31 km dalla città di Fano e 35 km dal capoluogo di provincia Pesaro. Il mainshock è stato seguito da una replica di ML 5.2 a un minuto di distanza. I due terremoti sono stati ben avvertiti in tutta la regione Marche, e anche in tutto il centro Italia fino a Roma e nelle regioni del nord Italia. Il Presidente dell’INGV, come previsto nel Protocollo di Ente per le emergenze sismiche e da maremoto, ha prontamente convocato l’Unità di Crisi e attivato tutti i Gruppi Operativi. Tra questi SISMIKO, che coordina le reti sismiche mobili INGV in emergenza, si è attivato immediatamente preparando la strumentazione necessaria per l’installazione di una rete sismica temporanea e per l’integrazione dei dati in acquisizione nel sistema di monitoraggio e sorveglianza sismica dell’INGV. Parallelamente alle attività di coordinamento e gestione dell’emergenza sono state attivate tutte le procedure inerenti la divulgazione (report, siti web, ecc) e l’analisi dei dati preliminari. La rete temporanea in emergenza è stata installata nelle prime 24 ore dalla scossa principale ad integrazione della rete sismica permanente dell’INGV in area epicentrale. La rete temporanea di SISMIKO, costituita da 8 stazioni sismiche trasmesse in tempo reale, ha permesso di migliorare il monitoraggio dell’evoluzione della sequenza, abbassando la soglia di detezione degli eventi sismici in area epicentrale e consentendo quindi una migliore localizzazione da parte del servizio di sorveglianza sismica nazionale. La gestione dell’emergenza sismica è avvenuta a pochi giorni di distanza dall’ esercitazione nazionale denominata “EXE Sisma dello Stretto 2022” svoltasi dal 4 al 6 Novembre 2022 nel territorio della Regione Calabria e della Regione Sicilia. L’esercitazione è stata coordinata dal Dipartimento della Protezione Civile. Le attività svolte durante EXE 2022 sono state per l’istituto, e in particolare per SISMIKO, propedeutiche per il buon esito di tutte le azioni messe in campo dall’INGV sin dai primi minuti dall’accadimento del mainshock del 9 Novembre.

In the frame of FocusX2 project INGV (Osservatorio Nazionale Terremoti and Osservatorio Etneo) and UniCal (Laboratorio di Sismologia) are deploying, from the end of 2021 to January 2023 a temporary seismic network for an active/passive seismological experiment to record regional and global seismicity in the Ionian Sea. The goal of this experiment is to improve the detection of seismicity in the Ionian Sea area and the accuracy of the locations; to better define the crustal structure of the region and find patterns related to fault systems. The seismicity in the area is possibly the result of two types of tectonic activity at different depths: a gently NW dipping subduction interface of the Calabrian subduction zone, and the strike-slip fault systems in the Ionian Sea, well expressed in the morpho-bathymetry and observed in previous seismic profiles. The deployment of 13 temporary land stations, FocusX temporary land (network code 1J) https://doi.org/10.13127/SD/O5QWM6WJCD along the coasts of eastern Sicily and SW Calabria, is going to complement the permanent networks (network codes IV, MN and IY); in the same period OBS stations are deployed at sea: FocusX temporary OBS-network (network code XH). The land stations are equipped with two different type of digitizers: Reftek 130 (12), and SaraSL06 (2); and with three different type of velocimeters: Trillium 120C (10), Le 5s (2) and ss08 60s (2). Continuous data are transmitted in real time at the INGV Rome acquisition system, used in the seismic surveillance, archived and distributed in EIDA https://eida.ingv.it/it/. In the deployment period 23rd December 2021 - 9th May 2022 regional seismicity (area between Lat 36.5-38.2 Lon 14.5-16.0) include 390 events located by the INGV seismic surveillance system, two of them with magnitude larger than 4.0 as well as 56 teleseismic earthquakes with magnitude larger than magnitude 6.0, two of them larger than 7.0. The two local events with M>4.0 and some of their aftershocks, were analyzed by the analysts of the Italian Seismic Bulletin including all the stations of the FXland 1J network.