Stereoscopic height estimation of biomass burning aerosol and volcanic ash plumes by the second-generation global imager (SGLI)

Intense wildfire and volcanic eruption emit a large quantity of aerosol in a form of plume that triggers various social and climatic consequences. Accurate simulation of such explosive emission events and the prediction of their consequences require a knowledge of the plume top height that could be estimated in several different approaches. This paper presents the application of stereoscopic height estimation technique to the data acquired by the Second-generation Global Imager (SGLI) aboard the Global change observation mission – C (GCOM-C) satellite that collected more than 6 years of global wide-swath (1200km) two-directional measurements. The SGLI captured 5 volcanic plumes among 10 most explosive volcanic eruptions in the 5-year period from 2018 to 2023. Along with an intense wildfire plume, we applied to observed plumes the stereoscopic plume top height estimation based on the normalized cross correlation (NCC) template matching. The estimated plume top height agrees with previous studies in most cases, while estimation was challenging for a volcanic plume case with low contrast and limited plume-top texture. The error estimation shows that the precision is about 700m and the accuracy is likely better than 1400m.