Ice on Fire: exploring the relationship between glaciers and volcanoes

Volcanic eruptions can destroy infrastructure, displace communities, disrupt air travel, damage businesses and, unfortunately too often, take people's lives, while also having a considerable effect on climate. With more than 30 million people living within 10 km of dormant or active volcanoes, forecasting volcanic eruptions, in a timely manner, is not just an academic pursuit, but has real-world life and death implications. Fortunately, most eruptions are preceded by some form of unrest that can be detected using remote sensing and used to provide an early warning. For example, eruptions are often preceded by increased thermal activity, with volcanoes sometimes showing signs of large-scale unrest for years prior to an eruption (Girona et al., 2021). Satellite borne infrared sensors are generally able to detect these anomalous increases in temperature. However, the presence of snow and ice, and especially glaciers, can significantly alter, or mask, evidence of any anomalous precursor thermal activity normally observed in this manner. However, glaciers may not always be a problem and could potentially be used to monitor volcanoes and provide some warning of unrest, because of alterations to their dimensions and/or dynamics. Our preliminary study from South America indicates that the relationship between the glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) and climate is often offset when glaciers are located on volcanoes. Other studies conducted by our group also indicate that glacier velocity is affected by volcanism and the magnitude of the effect is likely to be a function of time since the last eruption, the nature of that eruption and/or recent volcanic activity leading to, for example, increased geothermal heat flux. This project will investigate glacier-volcano interactions at both local and global scales in order to understand glacier response to volcanism (Barr et al., 2018) and develop tools for monitoring glaciers located on volcanoes that could be used to warn of future volcanic unrest.
In this exciting, interdisciplinary project we will look at different glacier-clad volcanic areas worldwide (Edwards et al., 2020) and analyse, at a regional scale, the difference in ELA between volcanic (glaciers located on volcanoes) and non-volcanic (glaciers proximal to but not located on a volcano) glaciers. Using a similar approach, we will also look at the differences/changes in glacier velocity and flow dynamics between volcanic and proximal non-volcanic glaciers. Finally, we will analyse the recent history of volcanic activity in these areas and, most importantly, the temperature of the volcanoes. These tasks will be performed using GIS and remote sensing techniques applied to a time series of satellite images and digital terrain models and integrated with available direct observations (glacier monitoring schemes, meteorological stations; observation of volcanic activities, satellite-borne measurements of volcanic temperature anomalies etc.).

Barr, I.D.; Lynch, C.M.; Mullan, D.; De Siena, L.; Spagnolo, M. Volcanic Impacts on Modern Glaciers: A Global Synthesis. Earth-Sci. Rev. 2018, 182, 186-203, doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2018.04.008.

Edwards, B.; Kochtitzky, W.; Battersby, S. Global Mapping of Future Glaciovolcanism. Glob. Planet. Chang. 2020, 195, 103356, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2020.103356.

Girona, T., Realmuto, V. & Lundgren, P. Large-scale thermal unrest of volcanoes for years prior to eruption. Nat. Geosci. 14, 238-241 (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00705-4.