Thermal infrared and visible ground camera images decomposed using the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition

The role of ground based infrared remote sensing in volcano monitoring increases during the years thanks to cost-cutting of this type of instrument and improvement of sensors.
A single board computer and three cameras make up the central part of VIRSO2, a low cost remote sensing instrument in use at INGV. One camera acquires in the visible bands, the other two in the thermal infrared bands (8-14 μm).
Using a filter in front of it, one of two broadband TIR cameras is narrow at 8.7 μm, allowing to detect SO2 gas and volcanic ash plume. The simultaneous use of the three cameras permits to study the geometry of the plume and retrieve  the physical parameters.

During these years, using the VIRSO2 camera, the eruptive (Etna, 1 April 2021), strombolian (Stromboli, May 2023) and degassing (Etna, August 2024; Popocatépetl, February 2023; Sabancaya, November 2022) volcanic different activities were investigated on the field by the INGV remote sensing group.

Turbulent fields, as the volcanic plumes, are the perfect application of the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD). The POD technique generates a field decomposition into eigenfunctions and their temporal coefficients. 
Reduced orthonormal basis generated using POD approximate thermal image fields acquired from cameras. Using this technique we aim to identify and characterize the different dynamical regimes and patterns acting on the emitted volcanic plume.   

Here the spatial and temporal volcanic plume dynamics are preliminarily investigated applying the proper orthogonal decomposition to the ground based measurement acquired using the VIRSO2 camera.