Understanding the SO 2 degassing budget of Mt Etna’s paroxysms: First clues from the december 2015 sequence

The persistent open-vent activity of basaltic volcanoes is periodically interrupted by spectacular but hazardous paroxysmal explosions. The rapid transition from quiescence to explosive eruption poses a significant challenge for volcanic hazard assessment and mitigation, and improving our understanding of the processes that trigger these paroxysmal events is critical. Although magmatic gas is unquestionably the driver, direct measurements of a paroxysm’s gas flux budget have remained challenging, to date. A particularly violent paroxysmal sequence took place on Etna on December 2015, intermittently involving all summit craters, especially the Voragine (VOR) that had previously displayed no…