Thermal unrest in not recently erupting volcanoes detected with remote sensing thermal data (ASTER and Landsat)

Volcanoes can experience periods of change in the baseline monitoring parameters, known as unrest episodes. Detecting an unrest is important since it can sometimes end with an eruption. Among the monitoring parameters there is the surface temperature (T_s) that can be measured also from remote sensing data. Here we used the T_s derived from Landsat and ASTER satellites to monitor and detect the thermal unrest in four different volcanoes that have not erupted recently: Campi Flegeri and Vulcano (Italy), Domuyo volcano (Argentina) and Fentale (Ethiopia). Results highlighted that all these volcanoes experienced periods of unrest characterized by an increase of T_s above the background level. The detected thermal unrest episodes are related to changes in other monitoring parameters (e.g., ground deformation, seismicity and degassing), although the onset-end time of the thermal unrest is not always consistent with onset-end time of the unrest detected from the other monitoring parameters. These preliminary results highlight the importance of using also the T_s from remote sensing data to monitor volcanoes.

Acknowledgment: the Space It Up project funded by the Italian Space Agency, ASI, and the Ministry of University and Research, MUR, under contract n. 2024-5-E.0 - CUP n. I53D24000060005.