Stromboli - Passive Degassing

Why this post? Well, it is related to my own work which focuses on the passive degassing (see previous post for info) of basaltic magma, such as that at Stromboli and who doesn't love to talk about their own work! To the right is a still of the summit area and below is a video of this passive degassing in process. The visible part of the plume is mostly water vapour but also mixed with other such as sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. If you look closely at one of the smaller vents in the centre of the video below you can see a regular, but small, puffing, which is likely some form of atmospheric transport effect created by the small vent itself. This can also occur on a larger scale, and largely invisible to the naked eye. The summit of Stromboli is consistently throwing out these gases at a varying rate, it is part of my work to try and understand why and how this emission rate varies at volcanoes such as Stromboli and Etna.

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