Weather predictions for a volcanic ash cloud tracking system (Paperback)

The CCMMMA (Centro Campano per il Monitoraggio e la Modellistica Marina ed Atmosferica) is the marine weather center of the University of Naples "Parthenope" and its purpose is to expose multi-disciplinary services for the environmental monitoring, to produce weather, marine and air quality forecast for Europe, Italy and Campania region (southern Italy) at as high as possible spatial resolution. The weather data of CCMMMA has been used to customize a prototype system focused on volcanoes of southern Italy that allows the on-demand forecast of ash cloud dispersion. The aim is to deploy a workflow of coupled models embedded into an advanced computing system, able to provide on-demand hourly simulations oriented to the dispersion of ash clouds from volcanic eruptions. The daily weather output of the Weather and Research Forecast (WRF) model was coupled with the CALPUFF modelling system to obtain a hourly forecast dispersion of volcanic ash clouds in Southern Italy. This process could be useful for early-warning system and to improve the studies about flight safety, environment protection and climate change. In this work some case studies with the validation of results, will be shown.