Real-time detection of volcanic plume H2O, CO2 and SO2 as a precursor to 2006 Mt. Etna eruptions

Mount Etna, in southern Italy, is well known for its uninterrupted open-vent degassing activity from the summit craters, making the volcano the largest point source of volcanogenic volatiles on Earth. Notwithstanding a substantial improvement of our understanding of degassing rates and mechanisms over the past two decades, analytical limitations still hamper the quantitative evaluation of the total volatile budget from the volcano. In contrast with the routine sensing of volcanic SO2 by UV-spectroscopy (Allard, 1997; Caltabiano et al., 2004), only a few spot determinations of CO2 emissions from Mount Etna have been reported to date (Allard et al., 1991; Aiuppa et al., 2006), while H2O emiss…