Following on from a visit by BPPTKG in May 2023 to Sheffield, Thomas Wilkes and Tom Pering returned the visit to Yogyakarta and the volcano Merapi in Indonesia. The team had the chance to collaborate and discuss the camera installation at one of the observatories overlooking Merapi volcano. One of the aims of the trip was to trial and install the latest version of the real-time processing software to enable up to date sulphur dioxide emission rates to be derived. The ongoing work is being funded by a Royal Society Knowledge Exchange grant.

VolcanoTech research team members from Sheffield attended the meeting  of the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) in Huddersfield from the 24th to 26th June. Rebecca England presented her poster on "Spectroscopic measurements of volcanic gases in volcanic environments" while Thomas Wilkes and Tom Pering presented their poster on "Permanent UV Camera installations for the measurement of Sulphur Dioxide emissions". 

Our latest PyCamPermanent software used to run our PiCam Permanent cameras has been updated with a new release - v2024.06 - Erebus. This update removes some bugs and alters the units that emission rates are output as. It also paves the way, through menu reorganisation and naming, for our upcoming work on real-time processing as part of a current project which is aiming to provide real-time analysis of sulphur dioxide emissions. Each new update will now be given the name of a volcano. We hope that the first named update has a cool name…

The software can be found on github: https://github.com/twVolc/PyCamPermanent ​

Tom Pering recently attended the Network for Observation of Volcanic and Atmospheric Change (NOVAC) meeting which was held in Ecuador in May. NOVAC is a community of volcano observatories who are focused on measuring gas emissions at volcanoes. Tom gave an overview of the current permanent installations of PiCam cameras and shared some early results and thoughts for the future.

Thomas Wilkes attended the European Geoscience Union (EGU) held in Vienna yearly to present two pieces of work involving the use of our PiCam ultraviolet (UV) cameras. 

A poster was presented outlining the application of our cameras for permanent measurements at six volcanoes worldwide, for a complete abstract of the work see here. Meanwhile, Thomas Wilkes presented on some exciting research looking at activity dynamics driving explosions at El Reventador in Ecuador, for a complete abstract of the work see here. 

Welcome to the VolcanoTech website! It is an exciting time for us in the group here at Sheffield as we begin the start-up process at the university. Our revamped website provides the latest information on our work, technology, and progress to date. Expect regular updates on our work and UV cameras which are busily measuring, currently in six locations around the world: Cotopaxi and Reventador (Ecuador), Lascar and Lastarria (Chile), Merapi (Indonesia), and Kilauea (USA).