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International audience; With at least four eruptions over the last 20 years, Sirung is currently one of the more active volcanoes in Indonesia. However, due to its remoteness, very little is known about the volcano and its hyperacid crater lake. We report here on the first measurements of gas and heat emissions from the volcano. Notable is the substantial heat loss from the crater lake surface, amounting to 220 MW. In addition, 17 Gg of SO2, representing 0.8% of Indonesian volcanic SO2 contribution into the atmosphere, 11 Gg of H2S, 17 Gg of CO2, and 550 Gg of H2O are discharged into the atmosphere from the volcano annually. The volatiles degassed from Sirung magmas are subjected to hydrothermal fluid-rock interactions and sulfide depositions, initiated by the disproportionation of SO2. These processes lead to distinct gas compositions and changing lake water chemistry (in the sub-craters and the main crater lake). However, the occurrence of SO2-rich fluids and strong gas flux appear to highlight a rapid fluid transfer to surface, avoiding re-equilibration with lower temperature rocks/fluids in the conduits.

Volcanoes provide important contributions to atmospheric budgets of SO2 and reactive halogens, which play significant roles in atmospheric oxidative capacity and radiation. However, the global source strengths of volcanic emissions remain poorly constrained. These uncertainties are highlighted here by the first measurements of gas emission rates from Ambrym volcano, Vanuatu. Our initial airborne ultraviolet spectroscopic measurements made in January 2005 indicate fluxes of 18–270 kg s-1 of SO2, and 62–110 g s-1 of BrO, into the atmosphere, placing Ambrym amongst the largest known contemporary point sources of both these species on Earth. We also estimate high Cl and F fluxes of ~8–14 and ~27–50 kg s-1, respectively, for this period. Further observations using both airborne and spaceborne remote sensing reveal a fluctuating SO2 output between 2004 and 2008, with a surge in the first half of 2005, and underline the substantial contribution that a single passively degassing volcano can make to the atmospheric budget of sulfur and halogens.

The correlation spectrometer (COSPEC), the principal tool for remote measurements of volcanic SO2, is rapidly being replaced by low-cost, miniature, ultraviolet (UV) spectrometers. We compared two of these new systems with a COSPEC by measuring SO2 column amounts at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaii. The two systems, one calibrated using in-situ SO2 cells, and the other using a calibrated laboratory reference spectrum, employ similar spectrometer hardware, but different foreoptics and spectral retrieval algorithms. Accuracy, signal-to-noise, retrieval parameters, and precision were investigated for the two configurations of new miniature spectrometer. Measurements included traverses beneath the plumes from the summit and east rift zone of Kīlauea, and testing with calibration cells of known SO2 concentration. The results obtained from the different methods were consistent with each other, with