A novel and inexpensive method for measuring volcanic plume water fluxes at high temporal resolution

© 2017 by the authors.Water vapour (H2O) is the dominant species in volcanic gas plumes. Therefore,measurements of H2O fluxes could provide valuable constraints on subsurface degassing and magmatic processes. However, due to the large and variable concentration of this species in the background atmosphere, little attention has been devoted to monitoring the emission rates of this species from volcanoes. Instead, the focus has been placed on remote measurements of SO2, which is present in far lower abundances in plumes, and therefore provides poorer single flux proxies for overall degassing conditions. Here, we present a new technique for the measurement of H2O emissions at degassing volcano…