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7711383 
Journal Article 
Two Ensemble Approaches for Forecasting Sulfur Dioxide Concentrations from Kilauea Volcano 
Holland, L; Businger, S; Elias, T; Cherubini, T 
2020 
No 
Weather and Forecasting
ISSN: 0882-8156 
Amer Meteorological Soc 
BOSTON 
35 
5 
1923-1937 
English 
WOS:000591359500014 
Kilauea volcano, located on the island of Hawaii, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It was in a state of nearly continuous eruption from 1983 to 2018 with copious emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) that affected public health, agriculture, and infrastructure over large portions of the island. Since 2010, the University of Hawai'i at Manoa provides publicly available vog forecasts that began in 2010 to aid in the mitigation of volcanic smog (or "vog") as a hazard. In September 2017, the forecast system began to produce operational ensemble forecasts. The months that preceded Kilauea's historic lower east rift zone eruption of 2018 provide an opportunity to evaluate the newly implemented air quality ensemble prediction system and compare it another approach to the generation of ensemble members. One of the two approaches generates perturbations in the wind field while the other perturbs the sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission rate from the volcano. This comparison has implications for the limits of forecast predictability under the particularly dynamic conditions at Kilauea volcano. We show that for ensemble forecasts of SO2 generated under these conditions, the uncertainty associated with the SO2 emission rate approaches that of the uncertainty in the wind field. However, the inclusion of a fluctuating SO2 emission rate has the potential to improve the prediction of the changes in air quality downwind of the volcano with suitable postprocessing. 
WEATHER AND FORECASTING